SWOT Analysis
Strengths:
Established Brand:
Airtel as a brand is well known to most people. This has helped the company to leverage its brand name to establish a relationship based on trust with its customers.
Strong Customer Base:
It has more than 65 million customers (July 2008). It is the largest cellular provider in India, and also supplies broadband and telephone services - as well as many other telecommunications services to both domestic and corporate customers.
Wide Coverage:
The company has covered the entire Indian nation with its network. This has underpinned its large and rising customer base.
Stakeholder Strength:
Other stakeholders in Bharti Airtel include Sony-Ericsson, Nokia - and Sing Tel, with whom they hold a strategic alliance. This means that the business has access to knowledge and technology from other parts of the telecommunications world.
Weakness:
Lack of Initial Experience:
When the business was started by Sunil Bharti Mittal over 15 years ago, the business has little knowledge and experience of how a cellular telephone system actually worked. So the start-up business had to outsource to industry experts in the field.
Infrastructure:
Until recently Airtel did not own any towers, which was a particular strength of some of its competitors such as Vodafone. Towers are important if a company wishes to provide wide coverage nationally.
Overloading of towers:
They have been frequency criticised for overloading their towers by more than150% which results in network jamming.
Opportunities:
Low tele-density:
Indian telecommunication sector is in its nascent stages. With just 19.86% teledensity, India offers a huge potential for telecom companies.
Rural population:
Te ...