India's first ever Air-conditioned Bus Shelter in Bangalore

• Passengers at one of the city’s busiest bus stands to now enjoy their wait
• Another initiative by Airtel in association with BIG Street to make life simpler for Bangalore citizens

Bangalore, 15th December 2008: Bharti Airtel, India’s leading mobile service today announced the launch of India’s first ever air conditioned bus shelter in Bangalore city in association with BIG Street. Mr. B.E. Govindaraju, Joint Commissioner (Advertisement & Markets), Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), inaugurated the unique bus shelter. Bus passengers in Bangalore can now look forward to a pleasant experience while waiting for buses.
Mr. Venkatesh V, CEO, Mobile Services, Bharti Airtel Ltd, Karnataka, said, "Airtel has always been the first when it comes to offering innovative services to customers - be it path breaking services like Hello Tunes, BlackBerry or the iPhone. On the communication front, the first-of-its-kind Airtel Rajdhani Express and this Airtel Air conditioned bus shelter, which is India's first ever such bus shelter are two such examples of our innovative initiatives."
Last year, Airtel had introduced the Bangalore Transport Information System (BTIS) in partnership with the Government of Karnataka. Governed by state-of-the-art technology that is based on recording traffic densities in real-time, BTIS makes use of Airtel's mobile network to keep the public updated in order to facilitate and steer towards optimal road choices. BTIS helps commuters make informed decisions, save time and fuel, avoid stress and frustration and also reduce road accidents. People can get estimated travel times on mobiles. The traffic police can manage traffic better since it will help them plan traffic load sharing and allocate resources better on ground.
“Our Endeavour in Big Street is to enrich people’s lives out of home. We undertook the initiative of providing AC bus shelter to the citizens of Bangalore and we are delighted to have Airtel partner with us. The launch of this first-of-its kind bus shelter in the country marks the beginning of many other innovative solutions that we will be offering” said Rabe Iyer, Head, BIG Street.
The Airtel air conditioned bus shelter is situated on the pavement diagonally opposite to Sree Kanteerava Indoor Stadium and is adjacent to the pavement near Cubbon Park entrance (Kasturba road). With dimensions of approximately 25x8 feet, it can accommodate 20 people at a time and will be manned by a uniformed guard. This project is a quantum leap in the kind of technological and design prowess utilized by BIG Street so far.
Bangalore is a city in which a lot of people depend on buses for their daily commuting and at times, passengers end up waiting for quite some time to catch their bus. With India’s first ever AC bus shelter coming up in the city, Bangalore underlines its cosmopolitan image by offering world class facilities to citizens.

About Bharti Airtel Limited:

Bharti Airtel Limited, a group company of Bharti Enterprises, is India’s leading integrated telecom services provider with an aggregate of over 85.5 million customers as of end of November 2008, consisting of 82.92 million mobile customers. Bharti Airtel Limited has been voted as India's most innovative company, in a survey conducted by The Wall Street Journal.

Bharti Airtel is structured into three strategic business units - Mobile services, Telemedia services and Enterprise services. The mobile business provides mobile & fixed wireless services using GSM technology across 23 telecom circles. The Telemedia business provides broadband & telephone services in 95 cities, DTH services and is foraying into the IPTV segment. The Enterprise business provides end-to-end telecom solutions to corporate customers and national & international long distance services to carriers. All these services are provided under the Airtel brand. Airtel’s high-speed optic fibre network currently spans over 83,000 kms covering all the major cities in the country. The company has two international landing stations in Chennai that connects two submarine cable systems - i2i to Singapore and SEA-ME-WE-4 to Europe. For more information, visit www.bhartiairtel.in

About BIG Street:

BIG Street is a subsidiary of Reliance BIG Entertainment Limited (RBEL) that operates in the media aggregation space. During the last 12 months of operations, it has established a dominant position in the Indian Out of Home industry with a cherry picked set of inventories across 8 key consumer markets in India. Some of the company’s important acquisitions are its DMRC rights in Delhi, Airoli & Bandra Skywalk in Mumbai, 172 Bus shelters in Bangalore and the latest being its Air Conditioned Bus Shelter in Bangalore which is the first of its kind in the country.