Aircel is a mobile phone service provider in India. It offers both prepaid and postpaid GSM cellular phone coverage throughout India. Aircel is a joint venture between Maxis Communications of Malaysia and Apollo Hospital Enterprise Ltd of India. UTSB has a 74% stake in Aircel and the remaining 26% is with Apollo Hospitals. It is India’s fifth largest GSM mobile service provider with a subscriber base of over 27.7 million, as of October 31, 2009.
It has a market share of 12.8% among the GSM operators in the country. As on date, Aircel is present in 18 of the total 23 telecom circles (including Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar & Jharkhand, Chennai, Delhi & NCR, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Karnataka, Kerala, Kolkata, Mumbai, North East, Orissa, Rest of Maharashtra & Goa, Rest of Tamil Nadu, Rest of West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh East, Uttar Pradesh West) and with licences secured for the remaining 5 telecom circles, the company plans to become a pan-India operator by 2010. Additionally, Aircel has also obtained permission from Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to provide International Long Distance (ILD) and National Long Distance (NLD) telephony services. It is also a category A ISP. It is also having the largest service in Tamil Nadu.
Aircel Business Solutions (ABS), part of Aircel, is an ISO 9000 certified company. ABS is a registered member of WiMAX forum – both in the Indian and International Chapters. ABS’ product range includes enterprise solutions such as Multiprotocol Label Switching Virtual Private Networks (MPLS VPNs), Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and Managed Video Services on wireless platform including WiMAX.
Aircel has won many awards for its services. Aircel was honored at the World Brand Congress 2009 with three awards, Brand Leadership in Telecom, Marketing Campaign & Marketing Professional of the Year. Aircel was honored by CMAI INFOCOM National Telecom Award 2009 for, ‘Excellence in Marketing of New Telecom Service’. Aircel had been selected as the best regional operator in 2008 by Tele.net. Aircel was rated as the top mid-size utility company in Business World’s ‘List of Best Mid-Size Companies’ in 2007. Aircel got the highest rating for overall customer satisfaction and network quality in 2006 by Voice and Data.
Aircel is one of the sponsors of the Indian Premier League Cricket Team Chennai Super Kings, which is captained by Mahendra Singh Dhoni. It is also the major sponsors for Chennai Open (the only ATP tennis tournament in India), and Professional Golf Tour of India.
Maxis, Aircel's majority stake holder at that time, raised RM11.2 billions (USD 3.36 billions)for its shareholders(UTSB), making it the largest IPO in Malaysia and Southeast Asia.
Aircel boat. Aircel, placed an actual dinghy lifeboat to a downtown billboard. A rope with a sign reading, “In case of emergency, cut rope”, held up the branded raft. July 15, 2009 the monsoon arrived and so did Aircel customer service. The dinghy was cut down and pedestrians were safely transported. What Aircel calls “Corporate Social Responsibility – A Solution”. The company was able to generate positive publicity and show consumers that they care.
Beautification of Anna Flyover has been taken up Aircel for a period of three years, the contract has been awarded by TNRIDC and executed by Chennai based outdoor advertising agency [Abra Media Networks http://www.abramedia.in/]. this project boasts of first of its kind lighting solution for the entire strech of the bridge and many other landscapes to enhance the look of the whole bridge. as far as the utility is concerned, they are building a dedicated toilet for the police guarding the Anna Flyover and the US Embassy. Once this flyover is being beautified, Aircel plans to maintain it for 3 years.
Usaha Tegas Sdn Bhd also owned telecommunication assets in Sri Lanka(SLT) and Indonesia(Axis), UTSB is one of the largest privately owned company in Malaysia The owner of UTSB is a Tamil of Sri Lankan origin Ananda Krishnan and he is the second richest person in Malaysia)
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