Vodafone Directors Resign from Bharti Airtel
The two Vodafone directors on the Board of Bharti Airtel have left the company following its takeover of Hutch-Essar. Bharti Airtel chairman and managing director Sunil Mittal said that both the directors - Gavin Darby and Paul Donovan - have resigned.
A Vodafone spokesperson has confirmed the decision.
In January, the Vodafone directors had abstained from the Board meeting when Vodafone started its pursuit of Hutchison Telecom's stake in Hutch-Essar.
Bharti Airtel has also announced that it has crossed the 40 million-mobile customer milestone. With this, Bharti Airtel becomes the first Indian mobile services provider and it says, the 10th in the world to join an exclusive list of global telecom operators with more than 40 million customers from a single-country.
It took Airtel 11 years to reach the 20 million customer landmark and just another 13 months to add the next 20 million customers. The Company's overall wireless market share catapulted to over 23.2% as of April 2007 from 20.4% as reported in FY06.
Mr. Sanjay Kapoor, President, Mobile Services, Bharti Airtel said, "Last year we created history by significantly increasing our market share and distancing ourselves from our competitors. The 40 million customer milestone is indeed a remarkable achievement not only for us at Airtel, but also for the country as it clearly underscores the coming of age of Indian companies in the international telecom arena."
Currently, Airtel is present in nearly 4,700 census towns and over 200,000 non-census towns and villages covering 59% of the country's population. The company plans to aggressively roll out more than 30,000 cell sites in FY08 to increase its population coverage to 70%.""
Posted to the site on 25th May 2007
