Aircel focuses on internet data services for growth

Almost 63% of the incremental revenue comes from data services

Telecom service provider Aircel is focusing on data services as a major area for its growth and would expect it to grow better with the growth of internet usage. The company is interested to associate with select start-ups in future, said Sunil Kuttam, national head-data and devices, Aircel Ltd.

Speaking to the reporters about the company's data and devices business, he said that the industry is focusing towards data since it is growing fast and additing directly to the earnings of the companies and Aircel is also completely focusing on data services for its future growth.

"In last one year the number of 3G subscribers went up by 167%. The revenue from data has gone up by 104%. We are actively rolling out 3G," he said. Around 38% of its customers are using data services. Almost 70% of the incremental revenue is from data services, though at present the revenue from data for the company is around 20% of the revenue, he said.

The overall revenue of the company is expected to touch around Rs 1,000 crore a month by this financial year, he added.

The company is investing more on technologies and models to reduce the price of data for the customers, including compression of video data, which would reduce the data usage per video for the customer and ease the bandwidth consumption for the company.

Around 63% of the total traffic is audio and video now, he said. This would also help the customer who have 2G data to enjoy video and audio services. It has around 17% internet penetration in rural and 57% in urban, by the end of 2015, while the industry average is 13% internet penetration in rural and 54% in urban parts of the country.

He added that the company is interested to work with start-ups, if they have proven the model, to support them with data services. He added that any technology related to connectivity would be helpful for the growth of the telecom industry.