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BANGALORE: JT Mobiles Ltd., the cellular service operator in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh (AP) has changed its name to Bharti Mobile Ltd. The name change comes in the wake of acquiring a majority stake and management control in JT Mobile by Bharti Enterprises. Bharti, which has already invested Rs 400 crore for acquisition and expansion is now planning to invest around Rs 150 crore this year for each state to improve the service and upgrading the hardware. Speaking about its plans, Deepak Gulati, Chief Operating Officer, Bharti Mobile Ltd., said, " The company is investing in over 150 sites by September 2000 to improve the quality of coverage where the service already exists. To enhance the capacity, new switches with a capacity of over 75,000 customers each are being installed very soon in Bangalore and Hyderabad."
Speaking about the new plans Gulati said that the company is giving priorities to improve the quality, customer service, market expansion and to introduce more value added services. In this end Bharti plans to offer Internet and web enabled services like mobile banking, online stock, currency and bullion information, short message service, call conference, automatic roaming etc. To improve the customer service the company has introduced 24-hour customer care in both the states.
As a first step, in next six weeks Bharti Mobile is upgrading its existing network. It is also planning launch its services in over 50 new towns in the two states including Hubli, Dharwad, Udupi, Manipal, Davanagere, Shimoga, Gulbarga, in Karnataka and Warangal, Kakinada, Rajamundry, Kurnool, Karimnagar and Anantapur in AP shortly.
Apart from these, Bharti is laying a 5,000km optical fibre network to cover the states of Karnataka and AP in two phases. On this regard, Bharti has awarded this project to Siemens Public Communication Networks and Systems Ltd (SPCNL). SPCNL has already commenced the work on linking Managalore and Udupi as a part of project. Currently, around 48,000 subscribers are subscribed to JTM in Karnataka.