Airtel to complete integration of Orissa, Bengal circles

Bharti Airtel, one of India’s leading telecom service providers, expects to complete the process of integration of its West Bengal and Orissa circles by the end of this month.

“The process of integration of the West Bengal and Orissa circles is 98 per cent complete and it is expected to be commissioned by the end of this month. The process of integration of the two circles started from April 1 this year”, a senior company official told Business Standard. Bharti Airtel has already informed its dealers spread across the two states on its integration plan. The telecom major went for the operational merger of the two circles because of similar customer profile in the two circles.

Moreover, the move is aimed at bringing more uniformity in Airtel’s mobile services so that the customers are benefited to a greater extent.

There are 22 different telecom circles across the country and according to the guidelines of the department of telecommunications of the Centre; Kolkata, West Bengal and Orissa are separate telecom circles. In Bharti Airtel’s network, West Bengal and Kolkata constituted a single circle while Orissa was a separate circle.

Following the integration of the West Bengal and Orissa circles, Deepak Shrivastava would be the new chief operating officer (COO) of the integrated circle. There would be no separate COO for the Orissa circle in the post integration phase even though the two circles would have separate marketing teams.

As a result of the integration process, there has been a redeployment of employees of Airtel in both the West Bengal and Orissa circles to different locations of the country like Delhi, Mumbai and Ahmedabad.