Aircel is a mobile phone service provider in India. It offers both prepaid and postpaid GSM cellular phone coverage throughout Tamil Nadu (including Chennai), Andhra Pradesh, Assam, North East India, Orissa, West Bengal (including Kolkata), Jammu and Kashmir, Bihar, Kerala, Himachal Pradesh & Mumbai. Aircel was founded by NRI businessman C Sivasankaran. [1] Aircel is a joint venture between Maxis Communications Berhad of Malaysia and Apollo Hospital Enterprise Ltd of India. It is India’s seventh largest GSM mobile service provider with a subscriber base of over 18 million. It has a market share of 6.3% among the GSM operators in the country. As on date, Aircel is present in 17 telecom circles (including Assam, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Kerala, North East, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, West Bengal, Delhi) and with licences secured for the remaining 10 of the 23 telecom circles, the company plans to become a pan-India operator by 2009. Additionally, Aircel has also obtained permission from Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to provide International Long Distance (ILD) and National Long Distance (NLD) telephony services. It is also a category A ISP.
Aircel Business Solutions (ABS), part of Aircel, is an ISO 9000 certified company. ABS is a registered member of WiMAX forum – both in the Indian and International Chapters. ABS’ product range includes enterprise solutions such as Multi Protocol Label Switching Virtual Private Networks (MPLS VPNs), Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and Managed Video Services on wireless platform including WiMAX.
Aircel has won many awards for its services. Aircel got the highest rating for overall customer satisfaction and network quality in 2006 by Voice and Data. Aircel was rated as the top mid-size utility company in Business World’s ‘List of Best Mid-Size Companies’ in 2007. Moreover, Aircel has been selected as the best regional operator in 2008 by Tele.net.
Aircel are one of the sponsors of the Indian Premier League Cricket Team Chennai Super Kings captained by Mahendra Singh Dhoni. It is also the sponsor for Professional Golf Tour of India from 2009 onwards.

Competitors
Aircel is the seventh largest carrier in India. Its competitors are (in order of customer totals):
Airtel
Reliance Communications
Vodafone Essar
BSNL
Idea Cellular
Tata Teleservices
Mts India