Bharti Airtel Limited is a global Indian telecommunication services company based in New Delhi, India. Operates in 18 countries in South Asia and Africa. Airtel offers GSM, 3G and 4G LTE mobile services, fixed broadband and voice services, depending on the country of operation. Airtel is also testing VoLTE technology in five cities in India and should implement the technology by the end of 2017. It is the largest mobile network operator in India and the third largest in the world with 400 million subscribers. Airtel was named the second most valuable brand in India in Brandz's first ranking by Millward Brown and WPP plc.
Airtel is recognized as a pioneer in the business strategy of outsourcing all of its commercial operations, except marketing, sales and finance, and building the low-cost, high-volume "minutes factory" model. The strategy has since been adopted by several operators. The Airtel team is supplied and maintained by Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia Solutions and Networks while IT support is provided by IBM. The transmission towers are maintained by Bharti's affiliates and joint ventures, including Bharti Infratel and Indus Towers in India. Ericsson agreed for the first time that it was paid per minute for the installation and maintenance of its equipment instead of being prepaid, which enabled Airtel to provide low call rates of ₹ 1 (1.6 ¢ US) / minute.