Aircel, Micromax tie up to drive data growth

Both companies will introduce reverse-bundling handset offers worth Rs 12,000 per month for every new Aircel customer

Telecom operator Aircel and mobile handsets manufacturer Micromax on Wednesday entered into a pan-India strategic partnership, under which both the companies will leverage each other's channel and retail networks, sales resources and together run an integrated device sales activation programme.

Besides, both the companies will introduce reverse-bundling handset offers worth Rs 12,000 per month for every new Aircel customer.

“The Aircel-Micromax alliance is aimed at promoting data and VAS (value-added services) along with voice benefits. The alliance will deliver services through the 1,20,000-strong retail network of Micromax and over half-a-million retail network that we have,” Hamir Bakshi, region business head (Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Orissa), Aircel, told mediapersons here.

Stating that Aircel, which holds licences for 4G LTE (long-term evolution) services across eight circles including in Jammu and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Bihar and Odisha, was already conducting trials, Bakshi said the evolution of LTE, however, would happen only when the ecosystem or the device space expanded.

“There is still work to be done to develop the ecosystem. This (Aircel-Micromax alliance) is a step towards achieving that,” he said.

While the global mobile data traffic was growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 78% since 2011 with the smartphones expected to contribute to 48% to this by 2016, he said, the situation in India was even brighter and was poised to outperform the global data usage. The India mobile data traffic is growing at a CAGR of 148% and the smartphone contribution is expected to reach 51% by 2016.

“Smartphones would lead the way with the category to contribute 60%, and laptops and tablets together accounting for 30% to incremental usage (entertainment services). About 70% of Aircel’s revenues still come from voice. However, as we see these devices expanding in the market, we will find the data usage increasing,” he added.

On the Andhra Pradesh circle front, Bakshi said the company had a subscriber base of 1.85 million, of which 45% of the customers use data. Of this, 30% use 3G. “Our immediate target is to take the subscriber base in the circle to two million by the end of this year,” he said.