AirTel clocks 1m customers in Karnataka

AirTel, the country's leading cellular service provider, has crossed a customer base of one million in Karnataka, which is next only to Delhi and Punjab. In Delhi and Punjab, AirTel has a customer base of 1.5 million and 1.1 million, respectively.

AirTel has taken only 12 months to add the last five lakh subscribers, while it took a little over three years to add the first five lakh.

According to Jagdish Kini, CEO and director-south central region, Bharti Cellular Ltd, "Having added the last five lakh subscribers within 12 months, we are confident that the next one million subscribers will come on board at a much faster pace. We also plan to create a lot of Wi-Fi spots within Bangalore to enable our subscribers to utilise the benefits of EDGE."

Having reached this mark, AirTel has announced that it will invest Rs 300 crore in Karnataka to strengthen its network in all the existing towns. Of the total investment that has been planned, Rs 200 crore will be invested only in Bangalore.

Currently, AirTel covers 160 towns in Karnataka. It would add another 90 towns by mid-November, which includes 50 and 40 towns in south and north Karnataka, respectively.

Following Pune and Chandigarh, AirTel has also announced the launch of EDGE (Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution), which is a 3G technology. Simply put, EDGE means broadband Internet speed on mobile.

It assures of speeds upto to 200 kbps and offers faster downloads, video/audio streaming and hordes of services such as remote surveillance web cam, Live TV viewing and multiplayer game.

Speaking to reporters, Manoj Kohli, president-mobility, Bharti Tele Ventures Ltd, said, "We are confident that the adaptability to EDGE will be very high in a city like Bangalore because of the IT and ITeS boom. People are highly tech-savvy and hence will soon realise the benefits of using broadband Internet speeds on their mobile handsets."

Following Pune, Chandigarh and Bangalore, similar EDGE roll-outs have been planned in Ludhiana, Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Kochi, Coimbatore, Jaipur and Lucknow.

As a promo offer, AirTel has decided to offer EDGE at charges that are similar to GPRS, which is a monthly rental of Rs 600. AirTel is currently working out a tariffs package for EDGE. All EDGE phones support GPRS but not vice versa.

In Bangalore only, AirTel's current base of GPRS subscribers will be migrated to EDGE. However, EDGE phones are essential to avail EDGE speeds. Handsets that are currently available in India, which are EDGE-enabled include Nokia 6220, 6230 and 3200.