Aircel is an Indian mobile network operator founded in 1999. It operates 2G, 3G, and 4G networks in many parts of India. Aircel has faced financial difficulties in recent years due to intense competition and high debt levels. It has received regulatory approvals to raise additional funding through loans but still faces challenges turning its business around. TRAI has also imposed fines on Aircel and other carriers for failing to meet quality of service benchmarks.

1. Prepared by:
Monalisa singha
Oindrilla dutta roy
Amit bapat
Prince gupta

2. ABOUT AIRCEL
Founded: C Sivasankaran
Commencement of operations: Tamil Nadu in 1999.
Headquarter: Chennai
Services: voice and 2G, 3G and 4G data
Place in industry : India's sixth-largest GSM mobile service provider
Subscriber base: 82.01 million subscribers as of April 2015
Stakeholder : Maxis Communications holds a 74% stake and Sindya
Securities and Investments holds the remaining 26%.
Operations in Coimbatore: April 8, 1999

3. Aircel Business Solutions (ABS): sells enterprise solutions such
as Multiprotocol Label Switching Virtual Private Networks (MPLS
VPNs), voice over internet protocol (VoIP)
 Hurdle: Rajeev Chandrasekhar promoted BPL Mobile was already offering
services across Tamil Nadu, including Coimbatore
 Reduction in call rates : From Rs 16.80 per minute (incoming calls cost Rs
8.40 per minute) to Rs 2 for a three-minute call made to another Aircel
connection and incoming calls free.
 With more than $2 billion in revenues in Malaysia, Indonesia and India,
Maxis is no telecom novice.
 In most circles, there are already six or seven operators and call rates are
fairly low.

4.  Major competitor: Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, and Vodafone
Essar—accounted for over 56 per cent of the market at the end of January
2008
 Main focus: Not not to be come no.1 in India but to focus on simplicity and
to portray as one who gives value for money and is trustworthy .
 Focus apart simplicity: Good service quality. It put up some 3,000 cell sites
in these circles and within a year of launch, Aircel was the largest brand in
Assam and the North-East.
 Further planning: In addition to the existing 7,000 cell sites, it planned to
have another 9,000 cell. Company needed another 7,000 cell sites for its new
operations, putting the number of cell sites at 23,000 eventually.
 Low-cost player : Aircel watchers say that the company has thrived on being
a low-cost player, and they expect it to remain so, at least, for a while.

5. A LEG UP
 Despite being a new pan-India wannabe, Aircel was in a better position compared to
some of the other players. A new player’s ability to start as early as possible will be a
huge advantage in a market where the total number of mobile subscribers tops 240
million, with eight million getting added every month.
 At last count, which is January 2008, Chennai and Tamil Nadu accounted for over
6.6 million of Aircel’s total subscriber base of 9.93 million. Point: It’s a brand that’s
still unknown to most Indians. Aircel recognises that fact, and that’s why has
appointed Pune’s Elephant Design to spruce up its brand.
 “Elephant Design helped them in coordinating the national look and imagery of
thier brand in areas like signage.
 The market scenario today is a lot more competitive than it ever was. With more
players scheduled to come in, another tariff war may well be in the offing, putting
more pressure on the already declining Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) for all
operators. To boost revenues, operators will have to look at other value-added
services (VAS).

6. TD SAT GIVES NOTICE TO DoT ON AIRCEL’S PLEA
FOR MORE SPECTRUM
 The telecom tribunal TDSAT issued notice to DoT over a petition filed by Aircel
seeking allocation of additional GSM spectrum before the proposed auction.
 Aircel has sought additional spectrum in Delhi, Mumbai, Rajasthan, Kolkata, Bihar,
UP East, West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir, North East, Orissa and three districts
of Assam telecom circle.
 Aircel has contended that it is entitled to the allocation of additional spectrum of
1.8 Mhz as per its licence.
 The right to receive additional spectrum is granted as part of the terms of the
existing license and the additional spectrum is allocated on meeting criteria set out
in DoT's guidelines applicable at the time of application for additional spectrum.
 "Aircel has fully met and satisfied the criteria for the grant of additional spectrum.
However, the DoT has without giving any lawful reason not allocated such
additional spectrum despite repeated requests," the operator said, adding it was a
breach of licence condition by DoT.

7. AIRCEL CANT BID FOR NEW SPECTRUM
 Indian operators Aircel and Tata Teleservices will only be allowed to add to their
existing spectrum holdings and can’t bid for new bands because they don’t meet the
financial requirements set by the Telecom Department (DoT) for next week’s auction.
“ The auction rules require bidding companies to have a net worth of at least INR1
billion (about $16 million) to buy frequencies in new bands or expand their coverage
into new areas ” - the Economic Times reported.
DoT said Aircel has provided bank guarantees of INR 5 billion while Tata
Teleservices (which operates under the Tata Docomo brand) has submitted an
earnest money deposit of INR 15 billion, which is higher than that from Uninor and
Reliance Communications.
 The Supreme Court, after being asked by DoT to reject any requests to stay the
auction, has directed the country’s high courts not to interfere with the spectrum
auction rules.

8. AIRCEL GETS A MOBILE WALLET LICENSE
FROM RBI
 Mobile wallets are hot in India right now and soon Aircel will have another
entrant in this space: Aircel subsidiary Aircel Smart Money Limited has
secured a five-year prepaid mobile wallet license from the Reserve Bank of
India (RBI) enabling them to provide mobile wallet services to its subscribers.
 Aircel is the sixth telco to receive the wallet license after Bharti Airtel,
Vodafone India, Reliance Jio, Idea Cellular and Tata DOCOMO. Airtel's
mobile wallet service Airtel Money is the currently largest among these
services, with the telco reporting an active user base of 1.7 million users in
India as of April last year.
 Top banks like SBI, Axis Bank and Yes Bank are also seeking a share of this
pie by launching mobile wallets of its own. According to RBI data,
transactions from m-wallets have surged three-fold to Rs 8,180 crore in 2014-15
over the previous year. The number of transactions rose from 106 million to
255 million in 2014-15.

9. HIGH COURT TELLS AIRCEL TO COMPLY WITH DoT RULES
FOR MERGED CIRCLES
The Madras High Court has asked telecom service provider Aircel to comply with
the conditions imposed by DoT with regard to merger of its Chennai and rest of
Tamil Nadu telecom circles and to amend the licence for the merged service area.
Taking objection to the order, Aircel and its subsidiary Aircel Cellular moved the
Madras High Court praying for direction to DoT to grant an unconditional formal
approval to the petitioners to merge their Chennai and RoTN licences for the
merged service area, that is, the Tamil Nadu service area, including Chennai.
Rejecting the arguments by Aircel, Justice V Ramasubramanian ruled that the
petitioners shall, within two weeks from the date of receipt of copy of this order,
comply with the conditions as imposed in the order of the DoT.
But, it does not mean that even while considering the applications for the grant of
fresh licences or the application for the grant of transfer of licences, the DoT is
obliged to ignore their earlier claim completely.

10.  The primary objections of Aircel had been to the two conditions according
to which the company was obliged to clear all the dues in respect of both
licences as well as payment of one time spectrum charges for the spectrum
held for the erstwhile two service areas.
 Aircel contended that the DoT cannot impose a condition for the transfer
of the licences, that would actually annul the effect of the interim orders
granted by the court.
 Aircel is the holding company and Aircel Cellular is its subsidiary firm and
both the boards have decided to merge the company for the purpose of
merging the licences.
 The circular, therefore, called upon the licensees who were having licences
in both service areas, to apply for the issue of licence for the merged service
area, without payment of any additional entry fee.

11. SWAMPED BY DEBT AIRCEL GETS DoT NOD TO
RAISE OVER 21K CRORE VIA LOANS
DOT has allowed Aircel to raise more than Rs 21,000 crore via local and
overseas loans through a consortium led by State Bank of India.
The DoT agreed to sign a tripartite agreement with SBI and Aircel to raise
Rs 14,500 crore as do domestic lending and $1.18 billion (Rs 7,080 Crore )
Chennai – based Aircel has permits to operate 2G services in 22 telecom
circles , 3G in 13 service areas and broadband wireless services, or 4G, in eight
circles.
The company's total debt shot up to more than Rs 24,000 crore primarily

12.  Intense competition and high interest costs have meant Aircel has been
losing money substantially over the years, leaving it with a negative net
worth of Rs 4,198.25 crore, according to DoT data released late January.
 The internal note says the tripartite agreement doesn't impose any
obligations on the government as a guarantor of the loan.
 The 15 circles that are being pledged by Aircel include Tamil Nadu,
Karnataka, Maharashtra, Delhi, Mumbai, West Bengal, Assam, Bihar,
Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Kerala, North-East, Orissa, UP
(West) and UP (East).
 While Aircel is regarded as a prime acquisition target, the debt on its books
has been a deterrent. a

13. TRAI IMPOSED FINES ON 8 MOBILE OPERATORS, AIRCEL
TOPS THE CHART
 TRAI imposed fine on GSM and CDMA mobile service providers who
were not meeting the benchmarks for Quality of Service as per
regulations Aircel and Reliance (Rcom and RTL) tops the chart.
 Fine of Rs.9,50000 on Aircel, for not meeting the benchmarks
prescribed in the Quality of Service (QoS) Regulations, based on the
Performance Monitoring Reports.
 TRAI measures the performance of Mobile Service providers based on
more than 10 parameters.
 Under these rule, service providers must pay a penalty of up to 10 Lakh (1
million) rupees for furnishing incorrect data measuring each parameter in
the report submitted to the regulator.

14. THANK YOU