Airtel-BSNL to ink pan-India roaming deal

NEW DELHI: In order to strengthen their 2G mobile coverage, telecom service providers Airtel and BSNL are likely to enter into an intra-circle roaming agreement.

"We are soon going to sign a pan-India intra-circle roaming agreement with Airtel with a focus to strengthen coverage in rural areas. Commercials are being worked out. This is most likely to be sign within a month," media reports said quoting BSNL Chairman and Managing Director Anupam Shrivastava.

BSNL is working on strategies to unlock its kitty carefully on building infrastructure and use sharing rules to bring down operational cost.

"We have made 'co-opetition' (co-operative competition) as one of the key strategies. Under this we are looking at opportunity where we can co-operate with other players to expand our business," he said.

BSNL's mobile network covers an area of 72 per cent of country's population which will further increase after completion of phase 7 network expansion.

Airtel claims its mobile network with 1,42,898 base stations covers an area of 87 per cent of India's population, while BSNL will have about 1,10,000 base stations after June this year.