Bharti Airtel’s founder Sunil Mittal elected as GSM Association’s first Indian chairman

Bharti Enterprises founder Sunil Mittal is all geared up to support the ongoing mobile broadband revolution in India to boost the Government’s Digital India Program.

New Delhi, Oct 27: Founder and chairman of Bharti Enterprises, Sunil Bharti Mittal will be the GSM Association’s first Indian chairman. The organization’s board elected new members for the two year period from January 2017 to December 2018 on Thursday to address growing issues faced by the telecom industry. “Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman and Group CEO, Bharti Enterprises has been appointed as the Vice-Chairman of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC),” the company said in a statement.

Mittal becomes the third business person from India in the history of ICC to be appointed on the ICC Executive Board. During his address, Mittal stated that he wanted to come up with solutions of issues that the mobile industry has been facing. As per reports by Mobile World Live, Mittal is all excited to support the ongoing mobile broadband revolution in India to boost the Government’s Digital India Program and its vision of broadband access for all.

The GSM Association’s Board has 26 members that include 25 operator representatives while some of the members include Wolfgang Kopf, senior vice president, public and regulatory affairs at Deutsche Telekom, Kazuhiro Yoshizawa, president and CEO, NTT DoCoMo and Phuthuma Nhleko, chairman and acting CEO at MTN Group.

Jon Fredrik Baksaas, who is GSMA’s current chair, will step down from the board at the end of the year while Mari-Noelle Jego-Laveissiere, executive VP – Innovation at Orange Group, was re-elected as deputy chair. There are going to be various hurdles for Mittal to overcome in the mobile industry.

Mittal had also received this year’s Harvard Business School Alumni Achievement Award. This award is presented annually since 1968 and is considered as the highest honour the Harvard Business School. Havard confers on its alumni who have contributed significantly to their companies and communities while upholding the highest standards and values.

As GSMA chair, Mittal will oversee the strategic direction of the organization, which represents around 800 of the world’s mobile operators, as well as some 300 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem. Earlier this year, the Bharti Enterprises founder took over as chairman of the International Chamber of Commerce and also serves on the boards and councils of international bodies and think tanks like the World Economic Forum and the Telecom Board of International Telecommunication Union.

Bharti Airtel was the host of the inaugural GSMA Mobile 360 – India event in New Delhi this week. Mittal led the GSMA Board delegation at a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and spoke at a keynote about the government’s plan to formulate a clear spectrum roadmap. Mobile World Live quoted Mittal saying, “The industry waited more than a decade for path-breaking measures to be taken by the government, but they eventually came and they came in pretty fast. Spectrum sharing, spectrum trading and a large amount of spectrum was finally put up for auction, taking India from being a very spectrum constrained industry to being a spectrum surplus environment.”