Airtel India customers will finance Zain Africa acquisition

India’s leading telecom operator Airtel has decided to pass on the costs of its recent acquisition of Zain’s Africa assets to its customers. In an exclusive conversation with India’s number blog Humor Unplugged, a company mole revealed that a plan has been formulated by Airtel to pass on the US 10 Bn bill to its 100 crore customers in India.

As part of the plan, Airtel will start charging customers for making calls to its customer care operators across the country.  The calls will be charged at 50 p for every three minutes and will be increased after the customers make more than a single call to customer care a week. Further, Airtel will also charge customers 45 paise for every ring on an unanswered call. And that’s not all. Airtel will also be levying customers a fee for registering on the national do not disturb registry.

Confirming the development, Bharti chief Sunil Mittal said “we are gonna be more stingy in the future, we will be squeezing the customers for all they are worth till our balance sheet becomes more balanced. Bharti’s CFO has been asked to put the organization on a diet and tap into hitherto untapped sources of income to keep the ship afloat.