NEW DELHI, April 9 – The mobile telephone market in Assam and other north-eastern States is all set to be more competitive with the likely entry of one more player in the field. Airtel has announced commencement of services in Assam and North East by the end of this year. The monopoly enjoyed by Reliance Telecom is likely to be a thing of the past and customers might actually stand benefited by the competition. The Airtel has entered into an agreement to acquire Hexacom, which has a license for North East. To complete its footprint in the entire eastern region, Airtel has recently applied for a unified access license to commence its service in Assam, a company spokesman announced.
The company, which unveiled its strategic roadmap for Eastern India envisages to be the first GSM operator to provide cellular services in all the 23 telecom circles. Airtel currently provides mobile services in 15 circles and has also acquired licenses to provide mobile services in five new circles of Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa, Jammu and Kashmir and UP (East). To service the telecom needs of a region, the spokesman said, Air Tel plans to set up over 500 sites in all the new eastern circles.
As part of the new rollouts, Airtel has proposed to invest around Rs 300 crore by the end of this fiscal. The Company’s roll out and expansion in eastern India, Airtel plans to expand its mobile services to 200 new towns during the current year (2004-05) out of which 100 towns would be added in the launch phase of new circles within second quarter of this fiscal. The spokesman said that to cater to the fast growing mobile base of Airtel in the country, Airtel would be scaling up its capacity to cater to the needs of over11million subscribers by the end of the year. The company currently has a subscriber base of over 6.5 million. The Airtel network currently manages more than 2 billion call minutes every month and with the scaling up of the capacity, it will be able to manage up to 4 billion call minutes.