Airtel to expand in Maharashtra

Bharti Airtel has plans to expand its network footprint in Maharashtra and Goa circle by bringing 200 more towns under its coverage area before March 2007.

As part of its mega expansion plan for the circle, the company is looking at smaller towns with a population of 5,000. The company claims to have overtaken Idea and Hutch in terms of net addition of customers during the year in these circles.

The network expansion, which would take the service provider's total coverage footprint to over 6000 towns by the end of 2006-07, will be backed by an aggressive roll out of over 850 additional base stations across the circle.

"Our subscriber base has grown by 102 per cent. As many as 6.62 lakh customers were added in 2005-06. In customer addition, we have secured top position in the circle by beating Hutch and Idea, who added 1.90 lakh and 5.10 lakh customers, respectively, during the last year. However, we are at the second position in the circle with 13.14 lakh customer base," said Mandeep Bhatia, chief operating officer, Bharti Airtel.

The new expansion plan is aimed at gaining the largest subscriber base in the circle. Post the expansion, the company would have 2,400 base stations in total in the circle, Bhatia said.

"In order to augment the capacities, we have already established our third mobile switching centre (MSC) in the circle at Nagpur. Next two will be deployed shortly at Nagpur and Kolhapur this financial year itself. This will add to our network capacity which will be equipped to handle an additional three million subscribers," he said.

The company will shortly add over 15,000 radio erlangs to our traffic capacity, which would further smoothen network delivery. "