The Rs 60,000 crore investment figure includes this year’s capital expenditure
Airtel said on Monday that it will shift all its pre-paid customers to "per second billing plan".
New Delhi: India’s largest telecom operator Bharti Airtel said on Monday that it will invest Rs 60,000 crore ($8.98 billion) over next three years to augment its network across the country. “Project ‘LEAP’ is a three years programme which we are putting up in place. It is the most ambitious and the largest network transformation programme that we have ever done,” said Bharti Airtel (India and South Asia) MD and CEO Gopal Vittal.
He said that the bulk of the investment will be in building infrastructure as the company has already bought most of the spectrum needed. In the current fiscal Airtel has a capex outlay of Rs 16,000 crore which is the highest in history of its Indian operations. The Rs 60,000 crore investment figure includes this year’s capital expenditure.
In the current fiscal Airtel will deploy over 70,000 base stations, which is an increase of around 60 per cent over total number of mobile towers the company has on ground. In three years, Airtel will double the number of mobile towers it has in India by deploying 1.60 lakh new base stations. By March 2016 over 60 per cent of Airtel’s network will be mobile broadband enabled.
Airtel will expand its mobile broadband coverage to all towns and over 2,50,000 villages by March 2016. In three years Airtel plans to offer mobile broadband to over 500,000 villages in the country.
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( Source : deccan chronicle )
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