Aircel mulls Rs 8,400-cr capex

The Chennai-based mobile operator Aircel today said it plans to deploy Rs 8,400 crore to accelerate its expansion and more than double its subscriber base to 100 million over the next two years.

Aircel, which is 74 per cent owned by Malaysia's Maxis Communications, wants to expand its presence into five more circles.

The fifth-largest GSM operator today agreed to sell its telecom tower assets to GTL Infrastructure for Rs 8,400 crore in an all cash deal.

"The proceeds of the deal helps us accelerate our expansion and growth plans in India. We are currently in 18 circles and it will help us go to all the 23 circles, which we want to go into by mid-June," Aircel Chief Operating Officer Gurdeep Singh told reporters here after the deal with GTL Infra.

Aircel is targeting the circles of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan by June 2010.

"We have 31 million subscribers now. The deal helps us accelerate our consumer acquisition plan and we are looking at 100 million subscribers by 2012," he added.

The telecom operator also plans to double its footprint of base stations to 80,000 by 2012 apart from investing in new retail outlets, VAS and increasing the scale of its WiMax operations.