India's Bharti Airtel to invest four billion dollars in 2006–2008

0 Comments | AFP, January, 2007

NEW DELHI, (AFP) — Bharti Airtel, India's largest private phone company, has said that its investments in the mobile phone market would reach four billion dollars in the two years ending 2008 with most aimed at the countryside. "Bharti Airtel has invested about two billion dollars in the financial year 2006-2007 and plans a similar investment in 2007-2008," a spokesman for the company told AFP on Thursday.

The spokesman was commenting on reports by Bharti Airtel's Joint Managing Director Akhil Gupta that said most of the investment would be in rural India. Gupta also urged the government to instruct state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam, India's largest phone company, to "share its infrastructure with private operators," the report said. Bharat Sanchar has so far opposed such...