Telkomsel vs Bharti vs Indosat vs XL : Mobile Operator Benchmark 2007

I'm being bombarded by relentless dogma about how Bharti Airtel is 'a role model' of astonishing telecommunications operator on hyper-growth market (e.g: India, Indonesia etc). Is it fact or myth? Let's deep dive into it, the figure below shows how is Bharti Airtel is doing compared to other mobile operators in Indonesia such as Telkomsel, Indosat and Excelcomindo (XL).


To keep the "competition" fair and square, I've limit the numbers on each of the respective contestants to be focusing on the mobile services only. The figures are taken from each of the respective company's published financial and operational report on Q3 2007 (9-months of operation). You can click on the figure below for more details.






It seems that Bharti Airtel does have the highest gross operating revenue ($3.9 B) and the highest customer / subscriber base (55 Mill). Trailing behind (in this benchmark contest) is Indonesia's (and ASEAN) largest mobile operator; Telkomsel with $3.3 B on gr. operating revenue and 45 Mill subscriber base.


Yet Telkomsel seems to beat Bharti Airtel on 'business operation efficiency'. Telkomsel has the lowest opex / revenue ratio (45.25%) compared with Bharti (64.71%). Excelcomindo (XL) came up second with 52.24% and Indosat earn the 'honourary' last place with (74.41%).


Telkomsel continue to leapfrog Bharti and also their own national competitors (Indosat and XL) on many other business aspects. The most notable are their 'head-count efficiency' with only 4037 heads on their payroll. Adding also that Bharti is known to have outsourced their IT to IBM with over 1500 people managing their IT environment, yet continue to maintain 8346 people on their payroll.


Another interesting fact; Excelcomindo (XL) have overlapped Indosat in terms of number of BTS. Based on the latest 2007 data; they've already deployed 9947 BTS compared to Indosat's 9413. Although they're still far away from the champion (Telkomsel) with 22.167 BTS.


On the bottom line; The year 2007, seems to be a very good year for Telkomsel. They've continue coming strong with 55% on national revenue share. I might guess that unless Indosat is (finally) shaping up, they will be overlapped by Excelcomindo (XL) in not so very distant future on national revenue share. Both share 16% and 10% of Indonesia's mobile services revenue-pie respectively.

More info can be found on each of the operator's website:

Telkomsel: http://www.telkomsel.co.id/
Bharti Airtel: http://www.airtel.in/
Indosat: http://www.indosat.com/
Excelcomindo (XL) : http://www.xl.co.id/


Peace and God Bless