Chennai: Bharti's cellular brand "Airtel" is having negotiations with its competitors in the Chennai circle and the rest of Tamil Nadu for sharing base stations for environment and economic reasons, according to a top executive of the company.

"With more operators entering into the cellular market, sharing of base stations would save lot of costs and avoid marring the skyline with an array of not so pleasant looking towers of each of the operators," P H Rao, Managing Director of Bharti Mobinet Ltd, operating "Airtel" services in Chennai circle told reporters on June 20.

Rao was launching Airtel's new 32K-sim card meant for post paid customers. Airtel customer strength had now touched 150,000 in the circle fetching the company a market share of over 53 per cent. RPG is the other operator in Chennai and Hutchinson, a third operator is all set to enter the metro shortly.

Rao said the number of Airtel's base stations in Chennai would go up to 155 by August ensuring better coverage in the city and the roaming facility for its customers at least in the south would be launched in the first half of July.

To a question, Rao said Airtel would not like to initiate a price war when the third operator entered the market, but would definitely try to match the tariff offerings of the competitors.

He said the recent insistence on furnishing the full identity for pre paid customers for national security reasons, there was at least a 10 to 15 per cent fall in new pre paid customers in Chennai.

PTI