No aggressive tariff cuts: Bharti Airtel

Age : 34 Joined : 08 Mar 2008 Posts : 1264

Bharti Airtel Ltd, India's top mobile services firm, said on Monday it does not expect to make any aggressive tariff cuts to maintain its share in a market that is becoming extremely competitive.

"Looking at the low level of tariffs, we do not expect any significant downward trend," Akhil Gupta, a joint managing director at Bharti Airtel, said in an interview on the sidelines of a conference in Singapore.

"Some tariff reduction is possible as we save on cost, and those benefits will be passed on to the customer. But we do not expect to make any aggressive cuts," he said.

Last month, Bharti, India's fourth-most valuable firm, said its number of users had reached 60 million, including fixed-line and broadband.

New Delhi-based Bharti, 30.8 percent owned by Singapore Telecommunications Ltd, reported a better-than-expected 42 percent jump in net profit to 17.22 billion rupees ($437 million) for the fiscal third quarter ended December.