Gathering Mass

The Chennai-based operator grew its subscriber base by a modest 5.63 percent in 2013 over the previous year, after having earlier scaled down its operations in a number of its circles, given a highly competitive scenario.

The top five circles by number of subscribers for Aircel were Tamil Nadu (including Chennai), UP (E), Bihar, Rajasthan and Assam, which together comprised 60 percent of Aircel’s subscriber base. The next five circles accounted for another er 23 percent of the base.

In terms of subscriber share, Tamil Nadu (including Chennai) was Aircel’s most significant circle, where the telco had a subscriber share of 30 percent. This was as follo followed by Assam, North East, J& J&K and Orissa.

In December 2013, ZTE said it had entered in an agreement with Aircel to deploy 4G LTE services in India. In the first stage, it said, the LTE deployment would be for Ch Chennai, Rest of Tamil Nadu (RoTN) and a few other business critical circles.

As this issue goes to press, in a somewhat sudden development, Aircel launched its 4G services in the four circles of Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar and Orissa. It had won the second largest number of BWA licenses in the auctions earlier.

The 4G launch is a bold move from Aircel, as it lets the telco steal a notional edge over Reliance Jio Infocomm, which is due to launch its 4G services in 2015.