Innovative Business Models: Bharti-Airtel

Bharti-Airtel of India continues to innovate on their business models, recently outsourcing mobile value added services to Comviva.  As you read through this article, one paragraph captures my attention:

Airtel’s IT contract with IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) works on a revenue-sharing basis, while the operator’s network outsourcing contracts with Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC) and Nokia Siemens Networks introduced a radical financial arrangement whereby Airtel pays for network capacity usage (priced per erlang), and not for the network infrastructure.

Bharti is not paying for the network infrastructure, they are not even leasing it, they are paying based on actual usage.