Aircel to complete pan India launch by July

Aircel has announced that it will launch its GSM mobile service in the five remaining circles by July. It is currently present in 18 telecom circles and this series of launches will complete its Indian network.
Gurdeep Singh, chief operating officer, Aircel, told reporters during a press conference that the company will launch its services in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan by July.
The operator has also announced a tie up with UK-based handset company, Inq Mobile, to launch two handsets – Inq Chat 3G and Inq Chat Mini 3G – focused on social networking. The handsets feature widgets of social networking engines such as Facebook and Twitter, along with other sites like Cricinfo, Google search and weather, and users can be logged on to a social networking site permanently. Singh said, “This is a 24 into 7 social networking phone. Once you log on to Facebook, you will be logged on, always.”
In terms of subscribers, Aircel is India’s fifth largest GSM service provider with a subscriber base of 33 million as of January 31. The company recently announced a deal with Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), which will supply network services to the operator and manage it for a period of four years as part of a deal valued in excess of $300 million (over Rs 1,385 crore).
Aircel offers both prepaid and postpaid GSM services. It is a joint venture between Maxis Communications of Malaysia and Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd of India. Maxis and Apollo Hospitals have a 74 per cent and 26 per cent stake in Aircel, respectively.