Bharti Airtel to spend $5bn (yes $5bn!) in 2009-10!

At a time when there’s a major economic downturn going on, I thought this piece of news was both (a) surprising and (b) good!

Apparently Bharti Airtel has earmarked about $5bn of Capex for services and infrastructure spend in 2009-10! Wow!

Frighteningly (if you’re the CFO I would imagine), this amount doesn’t include the money that the company will spend on 3G licenses! In fact, Bharti Airtel are not even committing to how much that will be….!

Well if nothing else, it’s good news that some companies have the money, and the gumption, to want to get things moving – perhaps a lesson that a few other big companies could take note of!

Let’s give it 12 months, and we’ll see (I hope) where all that money went – and what the return in terms of the all-important subscriber ARPU is….

[Via: The Economic Times (India)]