The Hindu Business Line : Airtel sees number portability as an opportunity

Bharti Airtel does not see its subscriber churn going up once number portability is introduced. Churn represents the number of subscribers moving to other mobile operators.

“We do not see churn increasing with number portability. We see number portability as an opportunity,” said Mr Deepak Mehrotra, Director-South, Bharti Airtel Ltd, on the sidelines of a press conference.

He said the average churn ratio for the industry was about 5 per cent and Airtel’s figure was much lesser.

Airtel currently operates on the GSM platform while operators such as Reliance and Tata Teleservices offer GSM and CDMA platforms.

When asked if number portability would affect single platform players like Airtel more than dual platform players, Mr Mehrotra said he did not wish to comment and said “at this point in time we are not investing in CDMA technology.”

Earlier today, he announced plans to expand coverage in Tamil Nadu. The company plans to add about 2,700 cell sites to its existing 4,000 by March 2008.

This would result in expanding network coverage to about 17,000 villages (currently 10,000 villages are covered by Airtel) in Tamil Nadu.

The company also plans to provide 100 per cent coverage on all national highways and 80 per cent coverage on all state highways and rail routes.

The SMS capacity is being increased to 5,850 messages a second from 1,850 messages a second, as Tamil Nadu subscribers are the highest users of SMS, Mr Mehrotra said.

Airtel has about 50 lakh subscribers in Tamil Nadu with about 2.7 lakh new subscribers are being added each month.

More Stories on : Telecommunications | Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd | Tamil Nadu

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