| Idea Cellular Limited, an Aditya Birla Group Company and one of the mobile operators in India, is going to extend its services to Bihar by end-2007.
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| At present, the company operates in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana,Delhi, Uttar Pradesh - east, Uttar Pradesh - west, Rajasthan, Kerala, and Himachal Pradesh with 8600 cell sites and 12.44 million subscribers as on December 2006.
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| "We plan to raise money publicly as we intend to further expand and strengthen our network in Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh - east circles. We plan to increase the coverage to 86,394 and 674 towns in these circles from the present 31, 153, and 98 towns in Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh - East respectively," said Bharat Banka, president and head, group finance, Aditya Birla group.
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| The company plans to set up close to 1200 cell sites in Mumbai and about 700 cell sites in Bihar before entering these circles by end-2007.
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| "We need a capex of Rs 1700 crore for further expansion of which 970 crore would be spent by March 2008," informed Murthy Gvas, general manager, finance and accounts of Idea Cellular.
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| The company feels that competing with established service providers in metro cities in Mumbai could be difficult and therefore plans value-added services and promotional offers to attract subscriptions.
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| For example, Idea is offering Life Insurance scheme free with its prepaid connections in some circles.
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| For other circles like Bihar, etc, the company feels there is a lot of scope as it is not well penetrated and Idea could leverage with congestion free services.
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| "We are also planning a survey report on customer feedback which we would use while entering newer circles to build loyalists," said Banka.
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| The company, at present, enjoys RPU (revenue per user) of Rs 340 across all the circles they operate in. |
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