Bharti Telecom, a subsidiary of Bharti Group deals in telecom-related services and products. The activities include basic/ cellular services, Internet services, manufacture of telecom equipment, VSATs etc. Its phones are sold under the brand names BEETEL and Siemens (a product of its joint venture with Siemens Telecom Ltd.). Bharti Telecom also manufactures telephone answering machines, cordless telephones and fax machines.

Bharti Telecom has two subsidiaries - Bharti Televenture and Bharti Telespatial. Bharti Televenture again has two subsidiaries - Bharti Cellular and Bharti Telenet. Bharti Telespatial also has two subsidiaries Bharti BT and Bharti BT Internet. Bharti Telenet Limited, a Joint Venture with Telecom Italia became India's first Fixed Line Telephone Operator in the private sector in June, 1998.

Bharti Tele Venture is into telecommunications and Bharti Telespatial is into services. Bharti Tele-Ventures has 51 per cent stake in Bharti Cellular, which operates cellular services in Delhi and a 51 per cent stake in Bharti Telenet which operates cellular services in Himachal Pradesh, and is set to operate fixed line (basic) telephone services in Madhya Pradesh. Bharti Cellular Ltd, had won the prestigious "Techles '98" award for brand excellence, network qualify, customer service and value added services the second time consecutively in 1999.

Bharti BT Internet Limited, a joint venture between Bharti Telecom Limited and BT Pie for providing Internet services in India, has commenced offering services in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore under the brand name Mantra Online since May, 1999. The Company offers dial ups - both PSTN and ISDN, leased lines, web hosting and VPN solutions.

Since the privatization of telephony services to the private sector and that too after declaring the long distance calls being privatized, telecom companies are moving fast in taking the major portion of the cake. The sector, which requires huge investments in the cabling infrastructure is a capital-intensive industry and the projects in this sector take long time to break even. Thus every telecom company is going for an IPO for huge amounts. As estimated there would be a total investment of around Rs. 25,000 crore by 2003. With this high potential, each company is taking the opportunity of getting huge sums to get ready for the massive investments and reap the benefits in the long run.

As far as Bharti Telecom is concerned, it had already issued an IPO earlier. But the promoters of Bharti Telecom, through two of their subsidiaries Bharti Enterprises and Bharti Global, acquired about 95 per cent of the company shares through a number of public offers.

The promoters' group made the first offer for acquisition of shares in June 1998, which hiked the stake from 79.58 per cent of the equity to 88.58 percent. The second offer in January 1999 went in a highly dramatic way. Sterling Infotech had bid for a stake additional to its then existing 9% at Rs.95/- in December 1998. Bharti Enterprises, along with Bharti Global, made a competitive bid to Sterling Infotech's offer aimed at the remaining 11.42 per cent equity stake from the public at Rs. 96, a rupee higher than the Sterling Infotech's bid for Rs. 95 per share. With this counter offer, Sterling withdrew from the fray from being a serious contender for Bharti Telecom. The stake further rose to 91.82 per cent after the second offer was complete. Later, Sterling sold off its stake to Bharti Enterprises.

The promoters of Bharti Telecom Ltd (BTL) came out with a third buyback offer for acquiring the remaining public stake in the company after a 3 month period of closing of the previous offer at the same offer price of Rs. 96 per share and remained open for six months. Meanwhile, the group had applied for delisting of its shares from all the stock exchanges in the country following the reduction of public shareholding to less than 25 per cent.

In August 2000, Bharti Enterprises announced management restructuring, entailing demerging its telecom services from hardware manufacturing businesses and hiving off of the overseas as well as software business into a separate firm. The group also announced plans for expansion of its cellular business by way of acquisitions and new projects, and a foray into basic services in Delhi and Haryana, among four-to-five new circles.

A newly-registered firm, Bharti Telesonic, is in talks with BT and Vivendi of France for national long-distance (NLD) telephony, and with SingTel, for setting up a submarine optic cable link between Chennai and Singapore. 

The service operations of the company will be restructured under three business lines -- Mobility (cellular projects), Basic Services (for fixed and fixed wireless services) and Networks (for broadband services, domestic long-distance, V-SAT and infrastructure development). The Networks business will constitute three divisions -- broadband services, domestic long-distance services and infrastructure development. Bharti-BT Ltd, the VSAT service provider, will also be a part of the Networks business.

The group is planning to list all of its subsidiary companies. Bharti Telesoft Ltd (engaged in software development and a Bharti Global firm), Bharti BT Internet (managing the ISP business and the Mantra Online portal) and Bharti Teletech (the new company for handling the telecom hardware; telephone sets business) are also being readied for listing. 

And Bharti Enterprises is planning to go for Rs.1500 crore IPO. With the bad experience of the investors in the Bharti Telecom shares, there would definitely be an impact on the group’s IPO issue. 

Moreover, the growth rate of subscribers of cellular phones is greater than the rate of growth for fixed line phone users. And DoT has plans of foraying into cellular service soon in most parts of India. So, the long monopoly and adherence of the public attitude towards the government services would affect the company’s telecom plans.