In the month of February there was some rumors in Media, about Virgin Mobiles entry into GSM market But now its confirm news that Virgin Mobile is ready to enter in the GSM space of India. Headquartered in the UK, Virgin Mobile will go ahead with its alliance with Tata Teleservices to enter the GSM network.
Jamie Heywood, deputy CEO, Virgin Mobile India, said that the company was trying to expand its reach in the GSM telecom arena. “We are getting into the GSM segment via the Tatas network. We have a commercial agreement with Tata Teleservices to offer our service on the GSM network. The agreement is technology-agnostic,” he said.
Tata Teleservices has GSM licence for 19 circles and has received GSM spectrum for 13 circles. The company has announced its investments to roll out GSM services in the 16 circles.
A year after its launch, Virgin Mobile still hasn’t been able to pull enough subscribers with its MVNO model CDMA service. Heywood said that the entry of Virgin into the GSM space would give the operator an edge to reach out to a larger subscriber base. “At present, around 70 per cent of the total mobile subscriber base in the country is GSM and entry into that space will help us expand our business reach,” he said.
He said that the offerings of the company in GSM would be based on the franchisee model. The company is not looking at an entry as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) in India, Heywood added.
“Globally we have been offering services in both the models — as an MVNO and also as a franchisee. In India, we will be offering our services as a franchisee operator. We have been a GSM operator in the UK, France, South Africa and Australia. We offer CDMA services in the US and Canada,” he said.
The company offers handset bundling offers with Samsung, Spice, Fly mobile, Huawei, ZTE and Haier. At present, the operator offers 12 handset models which include six exclusive handsets for Virgin.
