Aircel plans Rs 1000cr spread in Andhra

GSM telecom player, Aircel Limited, will be investing Rs 1,000 crore in Andhra Pradesh by the end of this calendar year, said company’s chief operating officer Gurdeep Singh.

This is part of the company’s $5-billion (over Rs 25,500 crore) pan-India expansion spanning the next three to five years, which envisages covering the National Capital Region, Uttar Pradesh (east and west) and Mumbai circles by mid April this year, and eventually connecting Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana by mid 2010, he told mediapersons here on Thursday.

“We currently have a national subscriber base of 17 million, with about 10 million predominantly in Tamil Nadu and the rest split between the 11 circles including North East and Assam. We expect this to grow to 30 million by 2009,” Singh said, adding the company aims to achieve a double digit market share nationally in the next three years from the present 5 per cent.

Detailing the expansion plans for Andhra Pradesh, he said the company would invest Rs 500 crore in the first phase for building base stations, installing switches and intelligent network, creating a data centre and setting up offices besides enhancing its retail presence by mid May, and an equal amount by this year end.

The initial phase will have 450 stations for Hyderabad and Secunderabad. This will be scaled up to 1,000 base stations in the next 60 days when all the major cities including Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Warangal and Kadapa will be covered, and touch 2,000 stations by this year end. Besides, the number of self service kiosks will be increased from four to 20 during the same time frame.

“We are right now sharing passive infrastructure (towers) on rental agreements or on longer lease basis with other operators,” Singh said after launching Aircel’s GSM services in the city

Hyderabad, with a penetration rate of 78 per cent, has 2 million migrants out of a total population of 8.1 million, which is indicative of the huge potential the market holds for Aircel, Singh said.

Replying to a query, he said the company was in talks with handset manufacturers to provide application-oriented handsets, which will be rolled out from June this year.