10 years of ... a Dream !

It's monday morning and I opened up a newspaper to find the following ads on the very top and very bottom of the very front page...

10 years of "good you called"10 years of "I'm 2 mins away"

And as I flipped the pages, I found the following

10 years of "nice tune, yaar"10 years of "got a charger?"10 years of "hd a gr8 time, thnk"10 years of "missing u :-("

On the entire back page, they had

10 years of touching lives across India.

And they are Airtel!

I as always tried to guess what the product could be ... My best shot was Delhi Times, the supplement with The Times of India (I think this "paper" is as bad as they come; this is another story, would try to cover later).

So the point is that Airtel has completed 10 successful years in the telphony market. They have moved from a cellular service provider to complete telecommunication service providers with specialized services ranging from Landline services to Email on the go.

When they started operations, they were a small comany charging about 16 bucks per minute for an outgoing call and 8 for an incoming call. In 10 years, the call rates have dropped to about 2 bucks on an average for outgoing and free for incoming ! Talk of changing the face of the market...

Airtel obsoleted the fixed line phones and made a telephone a personal item for the first time in India. For the first time with a phone, you could talk to people directly without going through long channels.

Next in line is outsourcing of the network. Management gurus said that your core competency should never be outsourced or given to third parties but no sir, Airtel would do it. In the long run, one may never know what might happen but in the short run, the strategy sounds great with all the benefits flowing into theor books. Infact other operators are also following suit.

O by the way ... Today happens to be Children Day, celebrated on the occasion of Pt. Jawahar Lal Nehru's BDay. He was our first Prime Minister. Yet again, I would like to reserve my comments for the gentleman.

Also two week long India International Trade Fair (IITF) starts today. 2005 marks the 25th aniversary of the IITF. I have many many fond memories of IIFT including a job hunt when I was in 11th std.

ORIGIANALLY POSTED ON Monday, November 14, 2005
REPOSTED FROM ABOUT2EVOLVE TO SEPTEMBERTHE22ND