Bharati Airtel to target Northeast rural areas

23 May 2009, 2210 hrs IST, Bikash Singh, ET Bureau

GUWAHATI: Bharati Airtel will target rural areas of the Northeast to propel its growth in the region. The company has planned to roll out 2500 Airtel Service Centers (ASCs) in the two telecom circles of Assam and North East.

For rural customers, Airtel has already set up 14,000 ASCs, and going forward, the company is looking at having over 1 lakh such centres across the country by March, 2010.

In the last four years, the company invested around Rs 1000 crore in the Northeast. Airtel’s Northeast subscriber base is at 2.7 million. In last fiscal, the company added some 1.2 million subscribers.

Executive director Syed Safawi who was in Guwahati said, "Out of the 37,000 census villages in the region, Airtel is present in at least 22,000. In the remaining village we will expand."

President mobile services, Atul Bindal added, From Northeast we are getting around Rs 75 crore revenue per month. Northeast and Assam circle (NESA) is a good business circle for us and is among the top 10 to 15 business circles. The company has 23 circles.

Last year Airtel has covered around 203 towns, 15,746 villages. Mr Bindal further said, The penetration of mobile telephony in the region is around 20 to 21 percent. This offers enough opportunity to tap the huge untapped areas.