Aircel launches services in Punjab

CHANDIGARH, INDIA: Aircel Friday launched its GSM mobile services across Punjab.

Bollywood actress Lara Dutta launched the service in the state, which has seen a phenomenal expansion in the telecom sector in the last few years.

"We are proud to be here in Punjab. We will be introducing products and services uniquely tailored to meet the special needs of our consumers in this state. We are offering very competitive tariff-plans in both pre-paid and post-paid connections," Gurdeep Singh, chief operating officer, Aircel, told reporters here.

Aircel launched the service in all 20 districts, 159 towns and 12,000 villages in Punjab.

About Aircel's investment in Punjab, Singh said: "So far, we have invested nearly Rs.350 crore in Punjab market. Our target is to increase our investment to Rs.1,000 crore by December 2011."

Aircel is now present in 21 telecom circles including Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Haryana, Assam, Bihar and Jammu and Kashmir.

Presently, Airtel captures the major part of the telecom market in Punjab. Besides, Idea-Spice and Vodafone are other competitors in the market.

"We are expecting whopping response from Punjab. With mobile penetration of 70 per cent and Internet penetration of 11 per cent in Punjab, there are a lot of segment-based needs that an operator can fulfill. We also target to launch 3G mobile services by December 2010," said Singh.