BHARTI AIRTEL PARTNERS WITH VIRTELA TO STRENGTHEN INTERNATIONAL MPLS CONNECTIVITY

Company Press Release:

BHARTI AIRTEL PARTNERS WITH VIRTELA TO STRENGTHEN INTERNATIONAL MPLS CONNECTIVITY

Enhances International Capability to Deliver Seamless MPLS Connectivity across 190 Countries

New Delhi, December 23, 2008 – Bharti Airtel, India’s leading integrated telecom service provider today signed a strategic agreement with Virtela, a leading global managed service provider, to significantly enhance its international managed MPLS (Multi Protocol Label Switching) connectivity outside of India to more than 5,000 PoPs (Point of Presence) across 190 countries. Under the agreement, Bharti Airtel and Virtela have integrated their networks through connection points in Southeast Asia and Europe in order to expand Bharti’s MPLS based IP-VPN (Internet Protocol Virtual Private Network) capabilities around the world. Bharti Airtel will now be able to offer its enterprise customers seamless managed MPLS connectivity and advanced managed network solutions to key business customers on a truly global basis.

“The need today is for world class telecom networks that can deliver a host of converged services through innovative and reliable communications technology. The partnership with Virtela is in line with our strategy to extend the global reach of our customers and to provide them with a secure, consistent and robust network running right from their doorstep to the most populous markets and beyond. There is a growing need amongst Enterprises for quality, value, consistency and reliability – anywhere, anytime and we are committed to deliver that value proposition for our customers across the globe.” said David Nishball, President Enterprise Services, Bharti Airtel.

“We are very excited to partner with Bharti Airtel in expanding the reach and depth of managed network services for their enterprise customers to enhance their businesses globally,” said John Powell, Virtela’s vice president of global channels. “This relationship further validates the success of our strategy to add value for service providers by augmenting their portfolios to deliver a seamless service for customers to achieve the highest performance and service quality available worldwide.”

In addition to the strong global connectivity footprint, Bharti Airtel also offers its enterprise customers a truly world class domestic network with PoPs (points of presence) across 125 cities and 83,000 kilometres of optic fibre cable covering all major cities in India.

Bharti Airtel also has partnerships with other major MPLS players such as Singtel, Telstra and others to deliver integrated managed MPLS services to its enterprise customers in India and has become single point of contact for their global communications needs by offering seamless SLAs, one simplified single currency invoice, under one contract. It has also been certified as the first Tier 1 service provider in Asia Pacific under the CISCO managed services channel partnership (MSCP) program.

About Bharti Airtel Limited:
Bharti Airtel Limited, a group company of Bharti Enterprises, is India’s leading integrated telecom services provider with an aggregate of over 85.5 million customers as of end of November 2008, consisting of 82.92 million mobile customers. Bharti Airtel Limited has been voted as India's most innovative company, in a survey conducted by The Wall Street Journal. Bharti Airtel is structured into three strategic business units - Mobile services, Telemedia services and Enterprise services. The mobile business provides mobile & fixed wireless services using GSM technology across 23 telecom circles. The Telemedia business provides broadband & telephone services in 95 cities, DTH services and is foraying into the IPTV segment. The Enterprise business provides end-to-end telecom solutions to corporate customers and national & international long distance services to carriers. All these services are provided under the Airtel brand. Airtel’s high-speed optic fibre network currently spans over 83,000 kms covering all the major cities in the country. The company has two international landing stations in Chennai that connects two submarine cable systems - i2i to Singapore and SEA-ME-WE-4 to Europe. For more information, visit www.bhartiairtel.in

About Virtela:
Virtela Communications Inc. delivers award-winning network and security solutions to many of the world’s largest and fastest-growing multinational companies. Currently serving customers across six continents, Virtela’s network reach spans more than 190 countries. Virtela’s unique Global Service FabricSM offers the foundation for delivering critical applications via the company’s acclaimed service methodology, with a services suite that includes MPLS and IP-based virtual private networks (VPNs), security services, remote monitoring and management of WAN/LAN infrastructure, and converged services (data, video, voice). For more information, please call +1 (720) 475-4000 or visit www.virtela.com.