Is Airtel barking up the wrong tree?

Here is some recent news from LinkedIn's Editors:

Bharti Airtel has come out all guns blazing in response to Reliance Jio’s disruptive broadband services. Starting next month, the telco will offer users an Android-based smart set-top box that combines digital entertainment – including premium OTT content, streaming apps, HD channels and virtual reality apps – and high-speed broadband, sources told Economic Times. A free LED TV may also be bundled with super-premium tariff packs to counter a similar offer by Jio. Business Standard says Airtel is expeditiously switching its 2.36 million home broadband subscribers from copper in the last mile to fibre at no extra cost.

Now, it seems to me that Airtel and many other companies are barking up the wrong tree. Our company deploys PodBanks in various locations and each of these requires an Internet connection. Since this connection is important to our services, we are prepared to pay a premium for a reliable stable connection. We need many connections (in the 10s right now, but soon going into the 100s and 1000s over the next several years). We have tried various kinds of "dongles" and Wireless Routers but those are flaky and not reliable (as wireless devices are wont to be).

So we contacted Airtel because so far I have a good experience with them for my home connection - it has been fairly reliable and I used it for almost a decade. I paid more than what most people were paying because it was reliable and worked 99% of the time. More on this later....

Unfortunately, no one at Airtel seems to be interested in our business. We tried contacting Airtel at many levels - Business Accounts Managers, Regional Heads, even National Business Account Managers. Not a single one responded. We tried through LinkedIn, called their offices, and even visited the local City HQ. Nothing.

Meanwhile, a couple of months ago, we moved houses. I asked Airtel to move my connection to the new address, which is barely half a kilometer away. They don't serve that housing complex! There are over a 1,000 flats/apartments in that complex and it is one of the oldest in that area, but they don't serve it!

Perhaps Airtel needs to focus on getting more business and at the very least, accepting business that is beating down their doors! Real growth will come from focusing on core activities rather than from entering yet another commodity driven market that they don't understand. Even if they do enter such new markets, they should not lose track of their present business. Through all the failed interactions with Airtel, I saw that employees are uncaring and bureaucratic, with the attitude of "not my job". Such a company is in deep trouble no matter how many new products they announce.