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Airtel Plans Bicycle Cell Phone Booths
Published August 23, 2005 by Newindpress.com
KOLKATA: Airtel is planning to set up bicycle cell phone booths in villages. According to Rajan Bharti Mittal, joint managing director, Bharti Enterprises Ltd, Airtel has enough funds at its disposal to accomplish the plans it has up its sleeve. ‘‘The rural sector is our main target now, and we intend to set up bicycle cell phone booths there at very cheap rates’’, he said.
These ‘mobile’ bicycles will be fitted with very small engines to be run on batteries from which the cell phones can be recharged. Airtel estimates one bicycle can cover 10-12 km and 2-3 villages a day. This novel concept will catch up easily in the rural areas, Mittal felt.
The service provider would also be setting up seven innovative and technological centres in the metros. Disclosing this here on Monday, Mittal stated, “These would basically be used for technology development and their implementation. These centres would also be used to attract the consumers by catering to their requirements.”
The centres would come up in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Kolkata and in all probability Chandigarh by the end of the current fiscal. He also stated that Airtel would be spending around a billion dollars as capital expenditure to spread the network to 5,000 towns with a population of over 5,000 during this fiscal. “We have already completed work in 2,800 of the towns. The remaining will be completed on schedule,” stated Mittal.
Mittal also stated that the main aim of Airtel would be to increase its market share in the GSM phone sector. “The consumer base is growing at a rate of 2-2.5 million per month. Our share of the GSM market is around 26 percent. We would certainly like to take it beyond the 30 percent mark,” he added. Mittal also stated that to improve services in the GSM sector more spectrum was needed for better bandwidth to improve services.
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