Saturday, November 27, 2010

AIRCEL


Aircel is a mobile phone service provider in India. It offers both prepaid and postpaid GSM cellular phone coverage throughout India. Aircel is a joint venture between Maxis Communications of Malaysia and Apollo Hospital Enterprise Ltd of India. UTSB has a 74% stake in Aircel and the remaining 26% is with Apollo Hospitals. It is India’s fifth largest GSM mobile service provider with a subscriber base of over 46.51 million, as of September 30, 2010. It has a market share of 9.65% among the GSM operators in the country. As on date, Aircel is present in all 23 telecom circles (including Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar & Jharkhand, Chennai, Delhi & NCR, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Karnataka, Kerala, Kolkata, Madhya Pradesh, Mumbai, North East, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, Rest of Maharashtra & Goa, Rest of Tamil Nadu, Rest of West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh East, Uttar Pradesh West) as per the company plans to become a pan-India operator by 2010.Aircel is undisputed market leader in Tamil Nadu,Chennai,Assam and North-East Circles,especially in TN state it is undisputed market leader since its launch. Additionally, Aircel has also obtained permission from Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to provide International Long Distance (ILD) and National Long Distance (NLD) telephony services. It also has the largest service in Tamil Nadu.

3G & BWA

Recently on 3G spectrum auction by Government of India, Aircel wins 13 circles out of 23 Circles in par with Airtel and Reliance as large bidder. Aircel also wins BWA(broadband wireless access) Spectrum in 8 Circles at auction. Aircel’s expenditure towards 3G and BWA comes to a total of Rs9,936 crore. While it bid Rs6,498 crore for 3G spectrum, it would pay another Rs3,438 crore towards BWA. Aircel wins 3G spectrums in A.P.,Karnataka,Tamil Nadu, Kolkatta, Kerala, Punjab, U.P(E), WestBengal,Bihar,Orissa,Assam,NorthEast,Jammu&Kashmir. On outcome of auction Aircel emerged as only operator to cover and provide 3G services in whole South India and whole North-East and East part of India. In BWA auction, Aircel wins Tamil Nadu,A.P.,West Bengal,Bihar,Assam,Orissa, North-East,Jammu & Kashmir. On outcome of auction Aircel emerged as 2nd largest winner

Aircel Business Solutions

Aircel Business Solutions (ABS), part of Aircel, is an ISO 9000 certified company. ABS is a registered member of WiMAX forum – both in the Indian and International Chapters. ABS’ product range includes enterprise solutions such as Multiprotocol Label Switching Virtual Private Networks (MPLS VPNs), Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and Managed Video Services on wireless platform including WiMAX.

Sponsorships

Aircel is one of the sponsors of the Indian Premier League Cricket Team Chennai Super Kings, which is captained by Mahendra Singh Dhoni. It is also the major sponsors for Chennai Open (the only ATP tennis tournament in India), and Professional Golf Tour of India.

Share holders

Maxis, Aircel's majority stake holder at that time, raised RM11.2 billions (USD 3.36 billions)for its shareholders(UTSB), making it the largest IPO in Malaysia and Southeast Asia.

Competitors

Aircel is the fifth largest carrier in India. Its competitors are (in order of customer totals):

  • Bharti Airtel
  • Reliance Communications
  • Vodafone Essar
  • Idea Cellular
  • Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited
  • Tata Teleservices
  • Uninor
  • MTS India