Bharti Airtel Q1 net beats f'cast, shares up (Reuters)

By Devidutta Tripathy 17 minutes ago NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Bharti Airtel Ltd, India's top mobile operator, beat forecasts on Thursday with a 34 percent rise in quarterly profit as it rode a boom in the world's fastest-growing wireless market, sending its shares up 5 percent. Indian mobile operators have been adding more than 8 million subscribers a month, thanks to call rates of as low as U.S. 1 cent a minute and affordable handsets starting from $15, and as operators expand their network to smaller towns and villages. The bulk of the new users are seen coming from the rural areas, where only one in 10 people has a phone, compared to a national average of about 25 percent. "It has been a particularly strong quarter, with monthly customer adds crossing the 2.5 million mark," Chairman and Managing Director Sunil Mittal said in... [read full story]