CompanyGraph
Bharti Airtel Limited
BHARTIARTL · India
Runs mobile phone networks across 17 African countries that also serve as the only banking system millions of rural people can access.
Bharti Airtel's subsidiary Airtel Africa holds spectrum licences across 17 African countries, and because rural populations in those countries have no bank branches within reach, the SIM card required to connect to the network doubles as the only identity credential available — making the cellular network the financial system too. Mobile money agents in rural Kenya and Tanzania process transfers by routing value through the same base stations that carry calls and data, with account balances tied to the SIM rather than to any banking relationship, so every transaction Airtel processes depends on that country's spectrum licence remaining valid. A competitor can buy Ericsson or Nokia equipment and lease tower space to match Airtel's coverage, but it cannot replicate the accumulated account balances and transaction histories already attached to existing SIMs — because number portability across most of these markets is either underdeveloped or absent, a customer who switches operators loses their entire financial history, which makes leaving prohibitively costly without any regulatory intervention. The whole structure unravels if a national regulator mandates interoperability between mobile money platforms or introduces full number portability, because at that point the financial history moves with the customer and the lock that no amount of capital can replicate simply disappears.
How does this company make money?
Customers buy prepaid airtime top-ups every month to make calls and send texts. They also pay for mobile data in per-gigabyte increments. Every time someone sends money through the mobile money system, Airtel Africa takes a small percentage of the transfer value as a fee. The company also earns revenue when its customers travel internationally and use partner networks run by European and Asian carriers — those carriers pay Airtel Africa under roaming agreements.
What makes this company hard to replace?
A customer who moves to a different operator loses their mobile money account balance and all transaction history, because those are tied to the SIM rather than to any portable account. Getting a new SIM from a rival operator also requires visiting a physical retail agent in person, which is a real barrier in rural areas where those agents are sparse. And because number portability regulations in most of these African markets are either underdeveloped or not in place at all, customers often cannot even keep their phone number if they leave.
What limits this company?
Each country's government controls how much radio spectrum is available, and that decision is made through local auction processes that Airtel Africa cannot influence or bypass. Since the number of calls, data sessions, and mobile money transactions the network can carry is directly tied to that spectrum, the company hits a separate ceiling in each of its 17 countries — and lifting any one of those ceilings means waiting on that country's regulators.
What does this company depend on?
Airtel Africa cannot operate without spectrum licences from telecommunications regulators in each of its 17 African countries and India. Its physical network runs on base station equipment from Ericsson and Nokia. International data connections rely on submarine fiber optic cables operated by third-party cable companies. Its towers are largely owned and leased from American Tower Corporation and IHS Towers. Billing and customer account systems run on software from Oracle and SAP.
Who depends on this company?
Mobile money agents in rural Kenya and Tanzania would lose the ability to process transfers entirely if Airtel Africa's network went down. African e-commerce platforms like Jumia rely on it for payment processing and logistics coordination — both would fail. Telemedicine providers in Nigeria use it to connect patients with doctors remotely; those consultations would collapse. Indian IT services companies whose employees connect remotely through Airtel Africa's network would also see their connectivity degrade.
How does this company scale?
Once a base station is installed and the network management software is tuned for a market, adding more users to that network costs very little — the same infrastructure carries more traffic without proportional new spending. What does not get cheaper or easier with growth is entering new countries: each one requires winning a separate spectrum auction, meeting different local partnership rules, and navigating its own political conditions, so expansion is slow and unpredictable by design.
What external forces can significantly affect this company?
When African currencies fall against the US dollar, Airtel Africa pays more for imported equipment from Ericsson and Nokia while collecting the same local-currency revenue from customers — shrinking its margins. Chinese state-backed investment through Belt and Road is funding Huawei-built telecom networks in some of the same countries, creating subsidized competition that a private company cannot match on price. European Union data localization rules require additional infrastructure investment to maintain roaming partnerships with European and Asian carriers.
Where is this company structurally vulnerable?
If a national regulator in any of these 17 countries mandates that mobile money balances and transaction histories travel with the customer's number when they switch operators, the main reason customers stay disappears. Right now, switching means losing your financial record. If that changes through a regulatory order on number portability or platform interoperability, Airtel Africa's hold on its customers weakens in exactly the same moment.