Riding on strong fourth quarter results, the Aditya Birla Group's telecom arm, Idea Cellular, the fifth largest GSM operator in India announced plans to invest Rs6,000 crore this fiscal in a pan-India expansion and strengthening its existing networks.

Releasing Idea Cellular's fourth quarter results in Mumbai yesterday, Sanjeev Aga, managing director, said that although the company does not want to forecast about the coming quarters, Idea is well equipped for any vagrancies in the market, even for some tough quarters.

The Mumbai-based telecom operator's net profit was Rs274.3 crore for the fourth quarter (Q4) ended 31 March 2009 compared to a net profit of Rs276.7 crore in the same quarter last year.

Its last quarter revenue rose to Rs2,935.6 crore while its last quarter revenue for last fiscal was Rs1,985.3 crore.

Total minutes used by customers on its on the network were 44,224 million, which grew by 9.9 per cent on a QoQ basis.

Aga said that he was completely satisfied with the results and since the company has sufficient liquidity, it is now planning to enter new markets as well as strengthen its existing ones.

He also said that currently the company has Rs5,000 crore cash and Rs7,760 crore debt on its balance sheet and another Rs2,000 crore can be generated from its operations.

But since rolling out 3G operation is a costly affair, the company has prepared itself with getting approvals to raise funds to the tune of Rs12,000-13,000 crore.

From 1 January, Idea had entered into an IRU agreement with Indus Towers covering Idea's 11,094 towers and launched its commercial operations in the service area of Orissa in April 2009.

It now has a customer base of over 43.02 million subscribers and operates in 16 service areas, covering 80 per cent of national subscribers.

Idea will also launch its operations in Tamil Nadu by June 2009, and the remaining service areas by December 2009, thus covering 90 per cent of the country's telephony potential and fulfilling its aim of becoming a pan India operator.