| He was speaking at the formal announcement of Hutchison Essar's acquisition of Aircel Ltd and Aircel Cellular Ltd (together Aircel) from Sterling Infotech. |
| The two groups are in the process of making the necessary application to seek approval from the Department of Telecom. |
| This will be the first intra-circle merger transaction since the announcement of the intra-circle merger guidelines. |
| Aircel operates GSM 900 cellular licences in Tamil Nadu. Aircel had over 1.1 million subscribers as on May 31, 2004. |
| The acquisition is subject to approvals from the concerned authorities. Hutchison Essar already operates a GSM 1,800 licence in Chennai. |
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