India's Bharti Tele-Ventures (BTVL) has signed and received Unified Access license to provide GSM services in 5 circles including Uttar Pradesh (East), West Bengal & Andaman Nicobar, Orissa, Bihar and Jammu & Kashmir. The license has been granted to Bharti Cellular Limited (BCL), the cellular arm and subsidiary of BTVL.

According to Mr. Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman and Group Managing Director, Bharti Enterprises, “With these new licenses, we are all set to further expand our footprint in the country.

While we expect to receive the license for Rajasthan shortly, we are well on our way to launch GSM services in these five circles in the second quarter of the next fiscal. This is in keeping with our commitment to build an unmatched telecom infrastructure in this country.”

With the grant of 5 new licenses, Bharti, which currently provides services in 15 mobile circles and 5 fixed line circles will have a pan India footprint extending from Jammu & Kashmir to Tamilnadu, and from Goa to Andaman & Nicobar.

 Thus the population covered under its license area has moved up from 600 million to 932 million (91% of all India population).

Bharti is India’s leading telecom conglomerate with an aggregate of 6.45 million customers as of January 31, 2004 consisting of approximately 5.86 million mobile and 587,872 fixed line customers. Its all India GSM market share as on January 31, 2004 was 25.1%.