Aircel, a joint venture between Maxis Communications Berhad, Malaysia and Apollo Hospitals group, has bid successfully for 8 circles across the country, in the just concluded BWA Spectrum auctions, establishing a strong contiguous presence in its leadership circles. This puts it in a formidable position, to provide a full suite of voice, data and broadband services in these circles.
The circles won are Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Assam, North-East and Jammu & Kashmir at a total auction price of Rs. 3438 crores. This makes it the second largest winner (in terms of circles) to obtain BWA spectrum. Aircel’s win is significant in that, it will also have besides its 2G network, a 3G presence in all its BWA circles.
In a statement Sandip Das, CEO of Maxis and Director of Aircel said: “This result demonstrates Aircel’s strong commitment to the Telecom market and its customers! When you look at how we have grown from a humble 3 million in 2007, to over 40 million subscribers nationwide, adding over 2 million a month, it has been an astonishing journey for the Aircel team led by Gurdeep Singh, COO, Aircel. In 2008 we rolled out infrastructure worth USD 2 Billion to cover 18 circles and then entered intra circle partnerships to create a Pan India brand. We have fired the imagination of our customers, with a suite of exciting non voice data services and products, even coining the term ’pocket internet’’ It was only natural for us, to take the next step and acquire 3G spectrum, which we did successfully across 13 circles at Rs 6500 Crores. The BWA win ‘joins the dots’ in our storyline and underlines our faith in future data services demand, in a country which has a dominant youth population and a gaping digital divide. We are also excited about Aircel, playing a critical role in the nation’s next phase of development, where we will see distances shrink even further and the fulfillment of life services like health, education, security in underserved geographies”