Coming close on the heels of the company's intent to expand operations and look at mergers and acquisitions in the cellular business, AirTel is firming up aggressive plans to widen the cellular market and bring the benefits of the new telecom policy to customers.

Bharti Enteprises chairman and managing director Sunil Mittal told The Financial Express that the major changes envisaged in the telecom policy 1999 would make it possible for his company to take on more low and medium level users in a couple of months time. "The earlier telecom policy of 1994 was restricting growth -- primarily due to the high licence fee -- and companies were keeping the entry barrier high for potential customers," said Mittal.

Mittaladded that his company would have gone ahead and initiated significant measures leading to price cuts in cellular services, but for the provisional nature of the new policy.

The Delhi high court had recently ruled that the new telecom policy 1999 will be subject to clearance by the new council of ministers and the lower house of Parliament, the Lok Sabha.

Sources said that many companies were afraid of announcing price cuts or other similar plans, as they fear that in case of the approvals not coming through, they would have to revert to the old price regime. "If such a thing happens, we will get into a messy tangle with subscribers and perhaps lose customers," they added.

Mittal, on his part, is gung-ho about the implementation of the policy and is confident that with companies hopefully having only to fork out a small percentage of annual revenue per subscriber, entry barriers would be lowered and new schemes to take on the low volume users would be announced.

"Infact, had the revenue-sharing regimenot been delayed, our package would have been announced a fortnight back," said Mittal, adding that the company had plans to offer 30 minutes free airtime on the Rs 600 rental to cellular subscribers.

The company has also has clubbed together its services business, comprising Bharti Cellular in Delhi and Himachal Pradesh, Bharti Telenet in Madhya Pradesh into Bharti Telecom Ltd.

This entity will also include Bharti Telespatial which comprises the internet services joint venture Bharti BT Internet and Bharti BT VSAT company.