The Hindu : Global roaming for AirTel users soon

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, May 22, 2003

Business

Business

Global roaming for AirTel users soon

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI MAY 21. The pre-paid service users of Bharti Tele-Ventures will have international roaming facility soon.

Disclosing this at a select press briefing here, Rajan Bharti Mittal, Joint Managing Director, said the company had already initiated parleys with a few global cellular service providers in this context. He, however, did not indicate any timeframe for the introduction of this facility. Pre-paid users, it is pointed out, have already been offered the national roaming.

Fielding a range of questions, Mr. Mittal said South was indeed a `huge hub' for the Bharti group. And, Chennai, in his reckoning, had emerged as the southern headquarter of the company. Though Chennai and Tamil Nadu formed two independent circles from the licensing angle, ordinary customers saw them as one. Ipso facto, Bharti would strive to consolidate this region. It had already invested about Rs. 2,000 crores in Tamil Nadu, including that on putting the under-sea cable that terminated in Chennai. It had drawn up plans to invest Rs.150 crores in Tamil Nadu this year. The network expansion plan envisaged a roll-out of 35 more base stations in Chennai (it has 170 now). It also planned to beef up the network in Tamil Nadu from 277 to 453 base stations by the end of the current year.

The move to augment the network capacity in Tamil Nadu had a twin objective. One, it was done in anticipation of swelling customer base. Two, it was also intended to provide congestion-free network what with competition turning hot and incoming calls becoming free.

The AirTel network in Chennai and Tamil Nadu now manages 38 lakh calls a day. The network expansion would be backed by investment on the IT front. The objective was to reach out to customers, according to Manoj Kohli, President, Mobility. In this context, Mr. Kohili pointed to the deployment of e-CRM and Kenan Billing system.

Mr. Mittal felt tariff, having gone down south, could no longer be a decisive factor for winning customers. A host of factors ranging from service quality, availability of new products, data services, brand consciousness and the like would prove the tilting factor in the coming days. Mr. Mittal said the regulator should stay focused on the development of telecom sector and ensure the viability of players through proper and timely intervention.

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