Tata Teleservices to Increase Network Investment by $1 Billion

­India's Tata Teleservices says that it plans to increase the investment in its GSM network by 50% to cope with growing demand. The company has already earmarked US$2 billion and will now increase that by a further US$1 billion.

"We have already committed $2 billion for the GSM services. Soon, we are going to commit another billion dollars as we want to further expand in our existing circles," said Tata DoCoMo President Deepak Gulati to Business Standard. He said the new investment will happen over two years.

"The initial investment was primarily meant for the launch of our GSM services. Now the spending will happen more on capacity expansion and expanding the GSM network further, as we are getting overwhelming response for our services," he added.

The operator was the fastest growing network in the country in August when it added 3.4 million new subscribers. The company ended the month with 42.8 million customers across both its CDMA and GSM networks.

Tata Managing Director Anil Sardana said earlier this year that 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 GSM platform.

Last year, Japan's DoCoMo took a 26% stake in India's Tata Teleservices for US$2.7 billion. 

Earlier this year, Alcatel-Lucent won a seven-year contract from Tata Teleservices to expand their CDMA /GSM network in 22 states pan India, covering close to 60 million subscribers. No financial details were provided though - or any indication of the scale of the contract. The company has also signed a passive infrastructure sharing contract with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) for its tower network.

On the web: Business Standard

Posted to the site on 18th October 2009