Bharti to roll out services in six circles soon

Mobile service provider Bharti Tele-Ventures has announced that it will roll out services in six circles "" Jammu & Kashmir, UP-East, West Bengal, Orissa, Bihar and Rajasthan "" shortly.

This will increase Bharti's national footprint from 15 to 21 circles. The company has earmarked an investment of Rs 2,000 crore for the next fiscal which will be used for network expansion as well as scaling up its capacity in existing network across all circles.

Speaking to mediapersons on the company's expansion plan, Manoj Kohli, president-mobility, Bharti Tele-Ventures, said, "We are embarking on this aggressive expansion plan which involves increasing network capacities, introducing new technologies, strengthening the spread and depth of coverage and adding host of other state-of-the-art software platforms."

As part of this plan, AirTel will expand its mobile services to 1,000 towns during 2004-05, of which 300 towns will be added in the 6 new circles. This expansion plan will provide AirTel with an all-India presence and it will be present in 2,300 towns by March 2005.

With this announcement, Bharti would have invested close to Rs 10,000 crore by March 2005.

Bharti would be scaling up its network to cater to more 11 million subscribers by the end March 2005. Currently, it has a subscriber base of 6.5 million. This network scalability will translate to managing 4 billion call minutes per month.

Across all 21 circles, mobile connectivity would be provided to 20,000 additional villages by March 2005. AirTel will also be doubling its cell sites from 5,000 to nearly 10,000 across the country.

In J&K, the company has been authorised to sell only post-paid connections. The launch is scheduled for August 15, 2004 and an investment of nearly Rs 60 crore has been earmarked for this circle alone.

The company has said that it will continue its thrust on sharing mobile infrastructure with other services providers for a more effective and efficient utilisation of resources. "It is clear that this initiative will result in saving of capital and operational expenses. Lower costs of roll out translate to lower service costs for subscribers. We are looking at lower roll out costs to the extent of 30-35 per cent," Don Price, group CTO, Bharti, said.

Today, nearly 30 per cent of AirTel cell sites are shared with other service provider and the company intends to increase it to over 40 per cent by the end of next fiscal.

A key feature of this expansion plan is the company's focus on deployment of EDGE (a technology on the lines of 3G) technology as well Wi-Fi solutions. For instance, in Bangalore, a total investment of Rs 200 crore is being made to build a "gold-plated" network with deployment of EDGE and use of Wi-Fi solutions.

According to Jagdish Kini, CEO and director-South Central Region, Bharti Cellular Ltd, "We intend to provide Wi-Fi connectivity in places like airports. In Karnataka, we are also meeting important officials to track the route that they often take, both within and outside Bangalore. We are doing this to ensure that we offer 'zero call drop' on specific routes. The call drop in Karnataka is 1.3 per cent."