Tata Teleservices' plans

By Our Special Correspondent

BANGALORE, OCT. 20. Tata Teleservices will make its entry into basic telecom services in Karnataka from mid-2002 and has drawn up ambitious plans of cutting into the market of Department of Telecommunication. With an investment of Rs. 2,000 crores over a 10-year period, it hopes to capture a subscriber base of 3.5 lakhs in five years in Karnataka.

Announcing the plans here, Mr. S. Ramakrishnan, Managing Director, Tata Teleservices, Mr. S. Ramakrishnan, said the company would also be making an entry into Delhi, Tamilnadu, and Gujarat around the same time and had paid an entry fee of Rs. 175 crores to the Government.

The company's roll out plans, he said, would be in accordance with the short distance charging areas (SDCA) obligations of the licence covering the entire state in the first five years. In Karnataka, there were 180 SDCAs of which 136 were in semi-urban areas and 22 each in urban and rural areas.

Mr. Ramakrishnan said the company had been given extension for signing the licence in Maharashtra, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and Kerala till October 31. The company had earlier received letters of intent for 15 circles.

In Andhra Pradesh, he said, the company had 86,000 subscribers within two years of its operations. By the end of the current fiscal, it would have invested Rs. 1,600 crores in Andhra Pradesh.

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Section  : Business
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