AirTel now in Chennai

Bharti Enterprises, a high-profile private telecom company in the country, has launched its `AirTel' mobile phone services in Chennai. This follows the company's recent acquisition of a majority stake of 89.5 percent in SkyCell Communications, one of the two mobile service providers in this region. "We are finally here. Chennai has been chosen as the hub and focal point for our various services including mobile, fixed line and undersea cable operations," said Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman & Group Managing Director, Bharti Enterprises.

"The company has invested Rs 100 crore in building and upgrading the network infrastructure here and an additional investment of Rs 100 crore is eXPected to be pumped in, in the next one year to provide world-class cellular service in Chennai," said Mittal. SkyCell Communications has been rechristened as Bharti Mobinet after the recent acquisition.

Bharti Enterprises' AirTel mobile service presently has a good customer base in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh and is confident of making big in Chennai also. "We have close to 53 percent of market share in Chennai now with a customer base of over one lakh and we plan to have 1.5 lakh registered users by this year end," he said. The company eXPects to serve 2.5 lakh customers by next financial year.

While talking about the company's OFC project, Mittal said, the network will be in place shortly and the commercial service would be launched by early next year. "We are in the final stages of the program and the fat pipes capable of carrying loads (bandwidth) in terabits would be linked to the global network through the Chennai gateway. This will offer unlimited global communication access for Indian customers," added Mittal.