Bharti Airtel shares fall for second straight day; down 3.5%

Mumbai: Shares of Bharti Airtel fell for the second straight session Tuesday, down 3.5 percent, even as the company announced investment of Rs 60,000 crore in the next three years to upgrade networks and improve quality of services as competition intensifies in the sector.

Scrip of the country's top telecom firm declined 3.53 percent to end at Rs 322.70 on BSE. During the day, it went down 3.94 percent to Rs 321.30.

At NSE, shares of the company fell 3.46 percent to Rs 322.75.

In the previous session also, the stock had lost 2 percent. The company has lost Rs 7,574.9 crore to Rs 1,28,996.10 crore in market valuation in two days.

The stock was the worst performer among the blue-chip Sensex and Nifty scrips today.

The company's announcement yesterday came against the backdrop of consumers facing problems of frequent call-drops. The government has been asking telecom operators to invest in network infrastructure to improve the quality of services.

As part of its 'Project Leap', which will entail investments of Rs 60,000 crore, Bharti said it will undertake a massive transformation of its network and will deploy over 70,000 base stations in 2015-16, making it the largest deployment in a single year since its inception.

In three years, Airtel will deploy over 1,60,000 base stations, effectively doubling its presence from what it has currently on the ground.

Airtel said a majority of this investment will be used on infrastructure to improve quality of call and data services.