“We do not brand handsets on our own. We do not subsidize. We do not manage the inventories. We work with different device players to bundle,” Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO of Airtel India said when asked about JioPhone’s launch during a recent analyst call. As per Vital’s response, Airtel will purely perform as a telecom service provider and will not look at manufacturing devices to take on Jio. “I want to clarify the difference between bundling versus discounting and subsidizing,” Vittal added. He said that the company will bundle “with different device players” to take on Jio’s feature phone launch. He stressed on the fact that Airtel has “no intention to get into is subsidizing devices, manning the device inventories and running these devices like they belong to us. That is something that we do not like doing.” Vittal added that the impact of JioPhone will be felt on the VoLTE segment, and Airtel is currently working on rolling out VoLTE on its network in the next 6-9 months. He, however, pointed out that a full-fledged VoLTE launch, won’t make much difference on the user’s end. The only advantage of VoLTE is the fact that customers can continue to use data while on a call, he added. “From a customer's perspective voice is voice. And so whether the voice is riding on a 2G network, 3G network or 4G network, it is still voice…if a customer is sitting on a 4G layer, they do not have to toggle back…
