Idea Cellular crosses the 7-lakh subscriber mark

Company Release, September 22

NEW DELHI

Idea Cellular in New Delhi has today announced that is has crossed the 7-lakh subscriber mark in Delhi. As in the past, Idea created landmarks of being the fastest to reach the 1-lakh and 5-lakh-subscribers mark in the GSM space.

Idea Delhi has been growing rapidly in the recent months wherein it has added 28,619 subscribers in July and 34,653 subscribers in August. The net additions in August ‘05 were the highest among all GSM operators in Delhi.

But the celebration just does not end here. Idea Delhi is the only private GSM operator, whose revenue grew by 3.7% in the quarter April – June ’05 over the previous quarter, where competition showed a decline. In the last one year, Idea’s revenue market share between all the three private GSM players (Airtel, Hutch and Idea) grew from 12.3% to 14.1%.

On ARPU’s, Idea is the only operator to post a growth of 1.2% in ARPU’s from Rs. 414 to Rs. 419 for the period April-June ‘05 over Jan – March ‘05. For the same period Airtel’s ARPU dropped from Rs. 588 to Rs. 566, a decline of 5.4% and Hutch’s from Rs. 477 to Rs. 446, a decline of 6.5%.

Commenting on the above, Rajendra Chourasia, Circle Head, Delhi, Idea Cellular said, “This growth is a result of our aggressive marketing strategies. The landmark offer of STD @ 99p and innovative products like I-card have received tremendous response from existing and new customers. The rapid subscriber growth clearly indicates the increase in preference for Idea among mobile users in Delhi.”

Idea is the first operator in the country to launch the promotional offer of STD @ 99p in the month of July. This has met with a tremendous response from the market. This has been followed by the launch of New !-Card in August. With this product Idea has emerged as the preferred choice for the youth. With power packed features like All India SMS @ 25p, STD @ 99p and Local calls to Idea at 25p, !-Card is the most powerful youth card in the country.

Moreover, Idea is the only operator in the country to reward customer loyalty in Prepaid with their Lifetime Idea program. This program, which was launched on 10th December 2004, gives bonus talktime to customers on every recharge in active state. In this program, customer gets Rs.20, Rs.30, Rs. 40 and Rs. 50 talktime bonus on every recharge on completion of 3,6,9 and 12 months respectively. On 11th September ’05, over 2.5 lakh subscribers have become eligible for Rs.40 talktime bonus on every recharge. Idea disburses bonus talktime worth Rs. 50 lakhs every month in this program.

In the last TRAI report on Quality of Service for Jan-March ’05 quarter, Idea has the lowest network faults per 100 subscribers and lowest Call Drops among all GSM operators in Delhi. Idea is busy expanding its network capacities rapidly. With the recent commissioning of its 3rd switch facility, Idea can now support 18 lakh subscribers. To provide uninterrupted connectivity to its 7-lakh subscribers, Idea is expanding its base stations and plans to set up additional 80 base stations in the next 3 months.

To facilitate uninterrupted access to its call center, Idea plans to set up a state of the art call center with a capacity of 300 seats which would equip Idea to effectively handle the increasing number of calls from existing and prospective subscribers.

With the aggressive marketing strategies and rapid investments, Idea is working towards further increasing the preference for their service and race to the 1 million subscriber mark in less than 12 months.

For further information, please contact:

Sangeeta Kuriakos

Clea Public Relations

email: sangeeta.kuriakos@cleapr.com

Mobile: 98915 97468