Aircel invests in technologies to build on data business

CHENNAI: Witnessing a 167% jump in the 3G subscriber base and a 104% revenue growth in 3G last year, Aircel is focussing its energies on making data more affordable and improving customer experience. "In case of data, most customers want faster speeds at cheapest possible prices - Aircel constantly innovates both on technology and pricing to ensure that consumers needs are met giving them great value for money,"said Sunil Kuttam, national head of data and services, Aircel.

In order to improve customer experience and offer affordability, Kuttam said the company was focussing on multiple areas inlcuding front end and back end technology. "We will have Google installing their servers in our data centre. We are enhancing server capacities as well," he said. The company recently announced a partnership with a startup, fastfilmz to provide users movie streaming on 2G. "A video compression technology enables fast streaming even on 2G. This means more data gets compressed which translates to lesser consumer usage and consequently, lesser costs for telecom companies," added Kuttam.

Aircel has also set up a dedicated big data team of 10-12 employees that focusses on providing insightful data through predictive analytics and churn modelling to the company. The company, which had initially invested in content, has now partnered with content providers and is awaiting clarity on net neutrality.

Kuttam said they are open to partnering with startups."We are looking at what technologies will really take off in the near future. We will partner with startups as consumer behaviour evolves,"he said. With substantial traffic coming in from users of WhatsApp and Facebook (72% penetration), Kuttam said over 63% of the traffic comes in from audio and video usage. The company said they have been fairly aggressive with their 3G rollout and have seen increase in user base through automatic conversion from 2G to 3G. "There is substantial demand. It is a question of supplying enough network,"said Kuttam.