Sunil Mittal on telecom regulation
From Bharti Ent. CEO Sunil Mittal: TRAI Needs To Look At Certain Issues Sensitively · · ET Now
“I think uh representation by the associations have been made to the regulator as they understand and from what I saw as a regulator statement they are reviewing that whole process there are issues on which uh regular needs to regulator needs to uh look at sympathetically I have said this before to your Chanel as well call drop is an issue that needs to be addressed in 20 years uh 18 or 19 years have been a very uh celebrated uh Telecom industry the last one one and a half years things have been a bit difficult Spectrum has been taken back reallocated frequencies reassigned which forces networks to be uh retuned uh spec the data search has taken away a lot of spectrum capacity so there are issues which are being addressed but I would say the uh angst or the uh anxiousness in the regulatory side as to why India is not having the best Telecom networks that it was having for 20 years is an issue that we all need to address and I personally believe every week every month things are getting better so I hope that the regulator will look at all the issues and come out with a solution which is conducive for the industry and equally satisfies their needs”
On , Sunil Mittal, Chairman at Bharti Airtel, spoke about telecom regulation during Bharti Ent. CEO Sunil Mittal: TRAI Needs To Look At Certain Issues Sensitively on ET Now.
About Sunil Mittal
Sunil Mittal, chairman of Bharti Airtel, participated in a conference call following the company's Q4 FY26 results, where he discussed plans to increase ownership in Airtel Africa over the next several years, describing a $3 billion share-exchange transaction as akin to acquiring a business the company knows deeply. He stated that the company's capital allocation priorities are investing in the core business, deleveraging, adjacencies such as data centers and financial services, and progressively increasing dividends. Mittal noted that the company's planned investment of 20,000 crore rupees in financial services over five years would likely be "significantly less" than that amount, and that Airtel is looking for a "very small controlled financial services business." Speaking at the CII Annual Business Summit 2026, Mittal urged Indian industry to increase domestic investment and reduce dependence on imports, echoing Prime Minister Narendra Modi's call for economic self-reliance. He said India needs to "get away from this obsession of import of gold," lower energy costs, and move faster toward renewable energy, adding that "this is the moment to invest double down in our own country." In a separate fireside chat, Mittal called on the GSMA to be more aggressive in advocating for market consolidation, citing India and China as examples where consolidation has led to lower tariffs and better network quality. He also described Airtel as a $130 billion company with 600 million customers across 17 countries, and highlighted the company's use of AI to block 71 billion spam calls and nearly a million fraudulent links.