Airtel launches mobile services in Lakshadweep

Kochi, May 24: Airtel has taken yet another technological leap to provide mobile services at Lakshadweep Islands and becomes the first private mobile service operator to start functioning in the Islands. Mobile services have been made available to the entire population in Kavaratti, Agatti and Bangaram Islands.

Bharti Airtel Limited Director Deepak Mehrotra said: "We are committed to bringing world-class services to customers and adding value to communities and businesses on the Island. Opening up the mobile opportunity for people in Lakshadweep, Airtel is committed to driving affordability and availability that can spur the uptake of mobile telephony in the Islands." Initially, Airtel will provide both prepaid and postpaid services in three Islands viz Kavaratti, Agatti and Bangaram.

Airtel has set up two towers in Kavaratti and one each in Agatti and Bangaram. The entire population of these three Islands can now avail Airtel Mobile Service.

Company's Chief Operating Officer Vikas Singh said, "We are extremely delighted at being given the opportunity to provide mobile services in Lakshadweep Islands. Bharti has been at the forefront of the telecom growth story in India, which is one of the fastest growing mobile markets in the world.

We are committed to providing world-class telecom services to our customers in Lakshadweep."

State-of-the-art 2.5 G Enhanced Response (ER) network on an 1800 MHz spectrum managed by Ericsson, world leaders in mobile phone and telecom infrastructure.

Bharti Airtel, a group company of Bharti Enterprises, is India's leading integrated telecom services provider with an aggregate of 64.26 million customers as of end of March 2008, consisting of 61.98 million mobile customers.

Bharti Airtel has been rated among the best performing companies in the world in the Business Week IT 100 list 2007.

The company has two international landing stations in Chennai that connects two submarine cable systems - i2i to Singapore and SEA-ME-WE-4 to Europe.
ANI