The Hindu Business Line : Bharti Airtel to cover 800 TN towns by August

Bharti Airtel Ltd, one of the mobile service providers in Tamil Nadu, plans to cover all the 800 urban towns in the State by August. It also plans to increase the number of base station towers to 4,500 and cover 15,000 villages by March 2007.

The company has covered 550 urban towns and 10,000 villages so far, while the number of towers is 2,400, according to Mr P. Swaminathan, Chief Executive Officer, Bharti Airtel Ltd - Mobility, Tamil Nadu.

He told a press conference on Thursday that the SMS capacity would increase from 3,500 messages a second now to 4,800 by this financial year-end. He declined to give investment figures for the State. The switch handling capacity would increase from two million to over three million customers.

In March 2005, Airtel had 1,000 towers and had covered 260 urban towns, 4,000 villages and had an SMS capacity of 700 messages a second.

Subscriber base

According to details available on the Cellular Operators Association of India Web Site, Airtel had 1,828,546 subscribers in Tamil Nadu (Chennai and Tamil Nadu circles combined) byMay end, 2006. By March end, the company's subscriber base was 15,71,417 against 7,98,728 at the end of March last year.

More Stories on : Telecommunications | Tamil Nadu

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