India's Tata Teleservices Planning $2 Billion Network Expansion

India's Tata Teleservices is planning to spend some Rs80 billion (US$2 billion) over the next two years on expanding both its GSM and CDMA networks. Various media reports said that about Rs60 billion would be spent on the new GSM network the company is building, with the remaining Rs20 billion going on its existing CDMA network,

Tata Managing Director Anil Sardana told the Economic Times the company was targeting a CDMA subscriber base of 100 million by 2011, by which time it expected to have 55 million new users on its upcoming GSM platform. According to figures from the Mobile World database, the company ended the first half of this year with 26.3 million CDMA subscribers.

The company is planning to launch their GSM service by the end of the year, but has only been granted radio spectrum in 5 of the country's 22 license circles.

"We do understand that there are security concerns in some of the states/circles where spectrum cannot be allocated. But wherever it is available there should not be any delay as the government had earlier announced in January this year that enough spectrum is available in most of the circles to accommodate all the new players as well to meet the needs of the existing operators," added Sardana.

Tata Teleservices is the phone services arm of India's Tata Group, and also announced a reseller agreement with Virgin Mobile earlier this year.

The company has also announced plans for a WiMAX network covering 15 cities by 2009.

On the web: Economic Times - Press Trust of India - Mobile World

Posted to the site on 10th August 2008