Aircel Ltd. was an Indian mobile network operator headquartered in

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the secon ...

that offered voice and 2G and 3G data services.

Maxis Communications Maxis Communications or Maxis Berhad is a communications service provider in Malaysia. It is one of the oldest and largest telecommunications companies in the country. Headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, it provides a variety of communica ...

held a 74% stake and Sindya Securities and Investments held the remaining 26%. Aircel was founded by Chinnakannan Sivasankaran and commenced operations in

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a state in southern India. It is the tenth largest Indian state by area and the sixth largest by population. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu is the home of the Tamil people, whose Tamil language ...

in 1999. It was once a market leader in

and had considerable presence in

Odisha Odisha (English: , ), formerly Orissa ( the official name until 2011), is an Indian state located in Eastern India. It is the 8th largest state by area, and the 11th largest by population. The state has the third largest population of ...

Assam Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...

and

North-East The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sep ...

telecom circle In India, mobile numbers (including pagers) on GSM, WCDMA, and LTE networks start with either 9, 8, 7 or 6. Each telecom circle is allowed to have multiple private operators; earlier it was two private + BSNL/MTNL, subsequently it changed to three ...

s. 2G and 3G Services including voice were shut down in all circles after failure of merger talks with

Reliance Communications Reliance Communications Limited (RCOM) was an Indian mobile network provider headquartered in Navi Mumbai that offered voice and 2G and 3G and 4G data services. In February 2019, the company filed for bankruptcy as it was unable to sell asse ...

History

Aircel was founded by Chinnakannan Sivasankaran from Kovilur village,

Cheyyar Cheyyar, officially Tiruvetipuram is a Town in the Tiruvannamalai District in the Tamil Nadu state of South India. The most common name of this town is Cheyyar but it is also referred to as Tiruvetipuram in many government records. The town ha ...

taluk,

Tiruvannamalai Tiruvannamalai (Tamil: ''Tiruvaṇṇāmalai'' IPA: , otherwise spelt ''Thiruvannamalai''; ''Trinomali'' or ''Trinomalee'' on British records) is a city, a spiritual, cultural, economic hub and also the administrative headquarters of Tiruvann ...

district and started its operations in the

telecom circle in 1999. It became the leading operator in Tamil Nadu and one of the fastest growing mobile operators in India. Malaysian telecom company

bought a 74% stock in the company from Sivasankaran in 2005. The remaining 26% stock is held by Sindya Securities and Investments promoted by Suneeta Reddy, Managing Director of

Apollo Hospitals Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Limited is an Indian multinational healthcare group headquartered in Chennai. Along with the eponymous hospital chain, the company also operates pharmacies, primary care and diagnostic centres, telehealth clinics, ...

. In 2012, as a part of a major re-organization in its operations, the company scaled down its operations in five

s, namely

Madhya Pradesh Madhya Pradesh (, ; meaning 'central province') is a state in central India. Its capital is Bhopal, and the largest city is Indore, with Jabalpur, Ujjain, Gwalior, Sagar, and Rewa being the other major cities. Madhya Pradesh is the second ...

Punjab Punjab (; Punjabi Language, Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also Romanization, romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the I ...

Haryana Haryana (; ) is an Indian state located in the northern part of the country. It was carved out of the former state of East Punjab on 1 Nov 1966 on a linguistic basis. It is ranked 21st in terms of area, with less than 1.4% () of India's land ...

Rajasthan Rajasthan (; lit. 'Land of Kings') is a state in northern India. It covers or 10.4 per cent of India's total geographical area. It is the largest Indian state by area and the seventh largest by population. It is on India's northwestern ...

and

Gujarat Gujarat (, ) is a state along the western coast of India. Its coastline of about is the longest in the country, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula. Gujarat is the fifth-largest Indian state by area, covering some ; and the ninth ...

. On 14 September 2016,

and Aircel announced the merger of their mobile network operations. Following the merger, the joint entity was expected to become India's fourth largest telecom operator in term of consumer base and revenues. A year later, however, both the companies called off the deal citing regulatory and legal issues. Aircel had planned to shut down its operations in unprofitable circles including, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh (West) from 30 January 2018. The

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is a regulatory body set up by the Government of India under section 3 of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Act, 1997. It is the regulator of the telecommunications sector in India. ...

(TRAI) asked Aircel to report the number of subscribers who have ported out from Aircel in these six circles. In cases, where the porting process could not be completed TRAI has asked the reasons for it. After the failed merger deal with Reliance, Aircel had considered merging with

Bharti Airtel Bharti Airtel Limited, commonly known as (d/b/a) Airtel, is an Indian multinational telecommunications services company based in New Delhi. It operates in 18 countries across South Asia and Africa, as well as the Channel Islands. Currently, ...

, whose chairman

Sunil Mittal Sunil Bharti Mittal (born 23 October 1957) is an Indian billionaire entrepreneur, philanthropist and the founder and chairperson of Bharti Enterprises, which has diversified interests in telecom, insurance, real estate, education, malls, hospit ...

had stated in November 2017, that Airtel "was open to acquisition talks". , Aircel was under a debt of around .

Services

3G

On 19 May 2010, the 3G spectrum auction in India ended. Aircel paid 65 billion for spectrum in 13 circles:

Andhra Pradesh Andhra Pradesh (, abbr. AP) is a state in the south-eastern coastal region of India. It is the seventh-largest state by area covering an area of and tenth-most populous state with 49,386,799 inhabitants. It is bordered by Telangana to the ...

Bihar Bihar (; ) is a state in eastern India. It is the 2nd largest state by population in 2019, 12th largest by area of , and 14th largest by GDP in 2021. Bihar borders Uttar Pradesh to its west, Nepal to the north, the northern part of West ...

, Jammu & Kashmir,

Karnataka Karnataka (; ISO 15919, ISO: , , also known as Karunāḍu) is a States and union territories of India, state in the southwestern region of India. It was Unification of Karnataka, formed on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reor ...

Kerala Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South Ca ...

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

and

Chhattisgarh Chhattisgarh (, ) is a landlocked state in Central India. It is the ninth largest state by area, and with a population of roughly 30 million, the seventeenth most populous. It borders seven states – Uttar Pradesh to the north, Madhya Prad ...

North East The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sep ...

, UP East and

West Bengal West Bengal (, Bengali: ''Poshchim Bongo'', , abbr. WB) is a state in the eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabitants within an area of . West Bengal is the fou ...

. It paid US$1.44 billion ( 79.1 billion) for the 3G spectrum. The company, had about 5 million 3G customers. Following the key players in 3G, Aircel also slashed its 3G tariff. In 2011, Aircel became the launch partner for Apple

iPhone 4 The iPhone 4 is a smartphone that was designed and marketed by Apple Inc. It is the fourth generation of the iPhone lineup, succeeding the iPhone 3GS and preceding the 4S. Following a number of notable leaks, the iPhone 4 was first unvei ...

along with

4G

In June 2010, Aircel paid 34.38 billion for acquiring wireless broadband spectrum in eight circles:

and

Jharkhand Jharkhand (; ; ) is a state in eastern India. The state shares its border with the states of West Bengal to the east, Chhattisgarh to the west, Uttar Pradesh to the northwest, Bihar to the north and Odisha to the south. It has an area of . I ...

, Jammu & Kashmir, North East,

and

. Aircel launched 4G services in Tamil Nadu and Jammu & Kashmir in August 2014, becoming the only private telecom operator to offer all the three existing technologies of 2G, 3G and 4G in these markets. Chinese equipment maker

ZTE ZTE Corporation is a Chinese partially state-owned technology company that specializes in telecommunication. Founded in 1985, ZTE is listed on both the Hong Kong and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges. ZTE's core business is wireless, exchange, op ...

announced on 30 December 2013, that it had won a contract to deploy a 4G broadband network based on LTE technology for Aircel. The LTE network will be launched in Tamil Nadu and will be expanded later to other circles. On 16 July 2014, it launched 4G services in four circles

and

Business Solutions

Aircel Business Solutions (ABS), part of Aircel, sold enterprise solutions such as

Multiprotocol Label Switching Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) is a routing technique in telecommunications networks that directs data from one node to the next based on labels rather than network addresses. Whereas network addresses identify endpoints the labels identif ...

virtual private network A virtual private network (VPN) extends a private network across a public network and enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network. The b ...

s (MPLS VPNs),

Voice over Internet Protocol Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...

(VoIP) and managed video services on wireless platforms including WI-MAX.

Network connectivity

Aircel offered poor network coverage in Delhi & NCR circle. It used radio link time out technology without which the call drop rates will be significantly higher and many customers reported this. In a 2015 survey conducted by ''

Mint MiNT is Now TOS (MiNT) is a free software alternative operating system kernel for the Atari ST system and its successors. It is a multi-tasking alternative to TOS and MagiC. Together with the free system components fVDI device drivers, XaAE ...

'' and Insta Vaani in

New Delhi New Delhi (, , ''Naī Dillī'') is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Parliament Hous ...

Bengaluru Bangalore (), officially Bengaluru (), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan population of around , making it the third most populous city and fifth most ...

Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

Hyderabad Hyderabad ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana and the ''de jure'' capital of Andhra Pradesh. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River, in the northern part of Southern Indi ...

Ahmedabad Ahmedabad ( ; Gujarati: Amdavad ) is the most populous city in the Indian state of Gujarat. It is the administrative headquarters of the Ahmedabad district and the seat of the Gujarat High Court. Ahmedabad's population of 5,570,585 (per ...

and

, it was found that Aircel offered the best service among all the telecom providers in the respective cities.

Operations

, Aircel had a subscriber base of over 84.93 million and was India's sixth-largest

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such ...

mobile service provider. With presence in 22 circles, Aircel was a market leader in

and had considerable presence in

and

circles. In 2012, as a part of a major re-organization in its operations, the company scaled down its operations in five telecom circles, namely

and

. In April 2015, Aircel relaunched its service in

. Now Aircel is under the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process From 12 March 2018.

Sponsorship and brand ambassadors

Aircel was the main shirt sponsor of

Indian Premier League The Indian Premier League (IPL), also known as TATA IPL for sponsorship reasons, is a men's T20 franchise cricket league of India. It is annually contested by ten teams based out of seven Indian cities and three Indian states. The leagu ...

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by st ...

team

Chennai Super Kings Chennai Super Kings (CSK) is an Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise cricket team based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Founded in 2008, the team plays its home matches at the M. A. Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai. The team is owned by India ...

and

I-League The I-League (known as Hero I-League for sponsorship ties with Hero MotoCorp) is the second-tier men's professional football competition of the Indian football league system. It is currently contested by 12 clubs across the country with the wi ...

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly ...

team

Shillong Lajong FC Shillong Lajong FC (founded as Lajong SC) is an Indian professional football club based in Shillong, Meghalaya, that competes in the Shillong Premier League. The club was established in 1983 with the prime objective of improving the declining s ...

. Aircel was also the principal sponsor for Atlético de Kolkata FC who play in the

Indian Super League The Indian Super League (ISL) is an Indian professional league for men's association football clubs. At the top of the Indian football league system, it is the country's primary football competition. Organised by the All India Football Federa ...

football competition. It was also a major sponsor of the Chennai Open ATP tennis tournament and the

Professional Golf Tour of India The Professional Golf Tour of India (PGTI), currently known for sponsorship reasons as the Tata Steel Professional Golf Tour of India, is a professional golf tour for men based in India. The tour was formed in 2006, as the successor to the Indian ...

. Aircel also sponsored the Save the

Tiger The tiger (''Panthera tigris'') is the largest living Felidae, cat species and a member of the genus ''Panthera''. It is most recognisable for its dark vertical stripes on orange fur with a white underside. An apex predator, it primarily pr ...

campaign for protecting India's tigers. The

brand ambassador A brand ambassador (sometimes also called a corporate ambassador) is a person engaged by an organization or company to represent its brand in a positive light, helping to increase brand awareness and sales. The brand ambassador is meant to embo ...

s of Aircel included the

Indian cricket team The India men's national cricket team, also known as Team India or the Men in Blue, represents India in men's international cricket. It is governed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), and is a Full Member of the International ...

captain

Mahendra Singh Dhoni Mahendra Singh Dhoni (; born 7 July 1981) is an Indian former international cricketer who was captain of the Indian national cricket team in limited-overs formats from 2007 to 2017 and in Test cricket from 2008 to 2014. He is also the curren ...

and

Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia ** Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, na ...

actor

Suriya Saravanan Sivakumar (born 23 July 1975), known by his stage name Suriya, is an Indian actor, producer, television presenter and a philanthropist. He primarily works in Tamil cinema where he is one of the highest paid actors. He received numer ...

. Aircel also engaged with boxer

Mary Kom Mangte Chungneijang Mary Kom (born 01 March 1983) is an Indian amateur boxer, politician, and former Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha. She is the only woman to win the World Amateur Boxing Championship six times, the only female boxer to ha ...

actors

Dhanush Venkatesh Prabhu Kasthuri Raja (born 28 July 1983), known professionally as Dhanush, is an Indian actor, producer, director, lyricist and playback singer who predominantly works in Tamil cinema. Starring in 46 films over his career, among hi ...

and Sameera Reddy.

Controversies

Aircel is being investigated by CBI for alleged irregularities in the Maxis takeover. According to CBI, Aircel's previous owner C. Sivasankaran was forced to sell his stake to Maxis by the then Telecom Minister

Dayanidhi Maran Dayanidhi Murasoli Maran (born 5 December 1966) is an Indian politician and one of the prominent members of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam party. He was elected thrice as a Member of Parliament to Lok Sabha from Chennai Central constituency during ...

in 2005 in return for Maxis' investment of Rs. 5 billion in a DTH company owned by the Maran family. There were also rumours in September 2012 that the Russian company

Sistema AFK Sistema PAO is a large Russian conglomerate company, founded by Vladimir Yevtushenkov, who was chairman of the corporation's board of directors until 2022. In April, Yevtushenkov's shareholding in Sistema has decreased to 49.2%, and he also s ...

was in talks to acquire Aircel which wasn't confirmed by either companies. Aircel was one among seven operators to receive notices from the

Department of Telecommunications The Department of Telecommunications, abbreviated to DoT, is a department of the Ministry of Communications of the executive branch of the Government of India. History Telecom services have been recognized the world-over as an important tool f ...

for not meeting radiation norms in their base tower stations in September 2012. On 28 February 2018 Aircel filed for bankruptcy at NCLT.

References

External links

* {{Telecommunication companies of India Telecommunications companies of India Mobile phone companies of India Internet service providers of India Companies based in Mumbai Indian companies established in 1999 Indian companies disestablished in 2018 Telecommunications companies established in 1999 Telecommunications companies disestablished in 2018 1999 establishments in Tamil Nadu