By the end of March 2008, said Deepak Mehrotra, Bharti Airtel Limited Director-South Hub, "Rural coverage would go up from 10,000 villages to 17,000 villages and we will increase SMS capacity by over three times from 1850 to 5850 messages."
He said, "To ensure seamless connectivity 100 per cent of national highways and over 80 per cent of state highways and railway routes would get covered by 2007."
Mr Mehrotra said, "Airtel's customer base is nearing five million mark in the state with about 2.5 lakh customers opting for Airtel every month. We have 2550 percent of post paid connections in the southern region," he added.
Elaborating on the investments he said, "Out of the Rs 3.5 billion investments by Airtel this year, a substantial amount was invested in Tamil Nadu and we will be increasing it further next year."