Airtel to enhance traffic carrying capacity, connectivity in city  ( July '22,2008, Economic Times)

Bharti Airtel is increasing traffic carrying capacity in the Mumbai circle by 10% and deploying more optic fibre and in-building solutions (IBS) to improve connectivity and quality of services in the financial capital.

“In the next couple of weeks, the capacity will be 10% higher than what it was before the fire broke out (in the company’s Lower Parel office) on Friday. This will be over and above the peak hours capacity,” Bharti Airtel president & CEO Manoj Kohli told ET.

Mr Kohli, who is in Mumbai along with Airtel president-mobile services Sanjay Kapoor, chief technology officer Don Price and other senior officials, said STD, ISD as well as data services were normal by Monday evening.

“We are still reviving interconnects with Vodafone Essar, MTNL and Tatas and this takes time logistically. By end of this week, all interconnects will be in good shape,” he said. Bharti officials and partners like Nokia, Ericsson and IBM have been working round-the-clock to restore connectivity to subscribers affected due to the fire in the operator’s office in Central Mumbai on Friday.

Bharti’s other two sites are in Malad, north Mumbai, and in Mahape near Mumbai. “The other two sites have taken up traffic very well and redundancy has been fully utilised,” he said.

The operator, with over 2.5 million users in Mumbai and over 69.8 million across India, is enhancing the fibre optic coverage in the circle. It currently has 450 km of fibre optic network in Mumbai, which will be increased to 500 km. Across the country, Airtel’s optic fibre network spans over 73,787 kms covering all the major cities.

“We have sanctioned more fibre to be deployed. The traffic is growing very well and we will need more capacity. There will be no congestion after capacity is increased,” he said. Bharti is also undertaking re-optimisation of its network. Network re-optimisation allows it to carry more traffic without adding capacity. “As topography changes, we have to fine-tune the network. At this point, we are re-optimising. We started with South Mumbai and by this week, there will be higher quality of services,” Mr Kohli said.

Airtel is enhancing the deployment of IBS. IBS provides an alternative to weakly covered areas, distributing radio frequency energy more evenly. It allows disruption-free communications allowing mobile users seamless access to various services.

The company will have to make payments to Vodafone Essar for re-routing traffic through its network after the Friday fire. Besides, Bharti is also spending considerable amount of money in re-starting operations at the Lower Parel building that also houses its BlackBerry server, data services and Home Location Register (HLR), which is the database of all mobile subscribers.