New Delhi: Bharti Airtel is keen on a full footprint of sub-GHz radiowaves across the country to boost coverage indoors and in rural areas, as it pursues an optimised spectrum strategy that balances renewal and capacity needs, CEO Gopal Vittal said on Thursday.
Speaking at an investor call after announcement of a strong set of Q3 numbers by Bharti Airtel, Vittal said the company has always been of the view that device subsidy game per se is value destructive, especially at the lower end of the market.
To deal with strategies around device subsidy on smartphones by rivals, the company would deploy different levers to ensure it remains value accretive and competitive in the marketplace, he added.
“As far as device subsidy on smartphones is concerned, we can’t comment much on it till we know what it is about, but suffice to say we will deploy different levers. We have got a full plan in terms of how we can deal with it, to make sure we do it smartly, in a value accretive way and to make sure we continue to remain competitive in the marketplace,” Vittal said.
Bharti Airtel – which recently declared that its network is 5G-ready – does not anticipate any major change in its capital expenditure profile with the advent of fifth-generation services.
“We do not believe that with 5G introduction, whenever it comes, we are going to see any material change in Capex profile. As you invest in 5G, you will stop investing in 4G because capacity creation will be done on 5G which will obviously be lower cost of producing a gigabyte, given that you have much higher spectrum in those bands,” Vittal said.
