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Aircel Ltd is likely to launch its 4G service in about six months, according to K. Sankara Narayanan, Regional Business Head, Aircel Ltd, Chennai.
He said that the company has identified data services as the future growth engine, even though voice services continue to account for the largest share of the revenue of the telecom industry.
Testing phase
Speaking to presspersons in Coimbatore on Tuesday, he said Aircel had placed the orders for equipment (for 4G service). It was testing the product and service configurations and it will take a “minimum of six months” to launch 4G services.
Asked whether with the imminent entry of Reliance Industries in the telecom space with 4G technology the telecom sector is in for a shake-up, Sankara Narayanan said that 4G is “definitely a step forward in technology” giving the customers a “fantastic choice”. It would also give customers “incredible speed that does not exist in the market today”.
He pointed out that 2G services were continuing to be in demand even after the advent of 3G. Similarly, after companies introduce 4G services, the 2G and 3G services would continue to co-exist with 4G because each segment has got its own users and each comes at a cost that would find backers. Aircel would offer a bouquet of services to its customers.
Asked whether the same handsets could be used for all the three technologies, he said: “The current handsets cannot support 4G.” He could not say whether the 4G handset could support the other two services as well. His understanding was that the number of devices that could run on 4G was “very limited today”. While the technology has been developed, the “handsets are not very popular, very widespread” (for 4G usage).
Data services
Sankara Narayanan said Aircel would like to focus on data services as it was the growth engine of the future. In Rest of Tamil Nadu area, out of its 1.8 crore customers, 26 lakh customers used data service. There were already 400 Aircel 3G towers in Rest of Tamil Nadu area and this was being augmented depending on the customer usage of data services. But all the 6,200 towers in Rest of Tamil Nadu were 2G ready and plans were to increase the number of 3G towers by another 400.
Explaining that data usage has “become a rage”, he said the revenue growth from 2G data services was an astounding 50 per cent a year in Aircel’s ROTN area while that from voice services was about 10 per cent.
In the July-Sept period, Aircel earned Rs 520 crore in ROTN area. The number of customers using data services had gone up by 100 per cent.
Sankara Narayanan said that another focus segment for the company would be youth and it has launched services like Pocket Internet Games aimed at this segment.
Asked how “effectively and permanently” the controversy over text message charges and termination charges had been resolved, he said the SMS issue “is not an Aircel issue, it is an industry issue”. The issue was before the court and the court had issued an interim order based on which reconnection has been established and the services resumed.
On talk that the Malaysia-based promoter of Aircel was keen to sell part of the stake to Russia’s Sistema, he declined to comment.
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