Tata Teleservices said it will launch GSM service shortly, thereby following in the footsteps of Reliance Communications, which got into the arena few months back, the first company in the country to be operating both in the CDMA and GSM fields. According to the Tata Tele MD, the company is going to launch GSM operations in southern states soon.
TTSL managing director Anil Sardana said the company has received spectrum (for GSM) in all circles, except in Delhi, and would start launching GSM mobile services in southern states soon followed by eastern India. Sardana said the company is waiting for statutory approval for the merger of its tower arm with Quippo Telecom.
TTSL also announced the launch of Quickfinder A-GPS (assisted global positioning system) Value added service for its subscribers. It would be powered by Qualcomm’s QPoint solution Quickfinder would deliver advanced location-based services, enabling consumers and enterprises to pin point locations of interest or track vehicles and consignments from origin to destination in real time.
At present, Tata Indicom is launching Quickfinder service in Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Jaipur and Ahmedabad. The service, which would be offered free of cost, would be available with Blackberry 8830 World Edition and MotoRAZR V3.
Tata Group’s mobile service company Tata Teleservices (TTSL), in which Japan’s NTT DoCoMo has a 26% stake, has drawn up a capex plan of $2 billion in 2009-10 for launching GSM-based mobile services. “We have a capex (plan) of $2 billion for the current fiscal (2009-10) for launching GSM services. The service will be launched in a few weeks,’’ TTSL MD Anil Sardana said on after the company’s launch of a value-added service.
TTSL, India’s fifth-largest mobile operator in terms of subscribers, operates on the CDMA technology, but is also expanding its services on GSM platform after the government’s nod to telcos for using dual technology of GSM and CDMA on a single license. The company has 35 million subscribers.
