The Hindu : Reliance Infocomm begins commercial operations

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, May 01, 2003

Business

Business

Reliance Infocomm begins commercial operations

By Our Staff Correspondent

MUMBAI APRIL 30. Reliance Infocomm Ltd. starts commercial operations of Reliance IndiaMobile service on May 1 in 92 cities that cover 90 per cent of its customer base. This launch is the first in a series and marks the beginning of the roll out of Reliance's communication business.

Reliance IndiaMobile signed up over one million customers in just ten weeks of opening its offer from 111 cities. The company claims to have captured nearly 60 per cent of the incremental post-paid market or 25 per cent of the total postpaid segment in this period.

After having launched services in 92 cities, the company is in the process of completing points of interconnection in the remaining 594 cities in India. Reliance Infocomm expects release of a substantial number of points of interconnect over the next few weeks.

The company has also signed agreements with 50 international carriers for international services. Points of Presence (PoP) have been established at New York and Los Angeles for carrying international traffic. Thus a Reliance IndiaMobile customer can make and receive calls to/from anywhere in India or in the world.

Reliance Infocomm is enhancing the value proposition of the Reliance IndiaMobile offer to customers to mark the milestone of acquisition of one million customers and concurrent with the commercial launch.

Accordingly, entry costs have been reduced to Rs. 3,350 with no post-dated cheques required. Existing customers can migrate to a preferred offer and no deposits are required for STD and ISD.

PTI reports:

Tariff structure

Reliance IndiaMobile today said it will charge a tariff of 40 paise per minute for calls made not just within its network but also to any other wireless in local loop (WLL) network irrespective of distance. This is applicable for the first 400 minutes.

Above 400 minutes, local and intra circle (irrespective of distance) and inter-circle calls up to 50 km will also cost 40 paise, a Reliance Infocomm statement said adding these tariffs have been filed with the TRAI and are subject to approval by the regulator. The charges for above 400 minutes and inter-circle calls over 50 km will be charged at Rs. 1.90 per minute.

In the case of calls made from Reliance IndiaMobile to any cellular network, the tariffs will be charged at Rs. 1.20 per minute up to 50 km for local, intra-circle and inter-circle calls irrespective of distance.

For a call made from the Reliance IndiaMobile network to the fixed line network, the tariffs will be Rs. 1 per minute for local, inter and intra-circle calls up to 50 km, the statement said and added that Rs. 1.90 per minute will be charged for both intra-circle calls above 50 km and inter-circle calls within 50-200 km range.

For inter-circle calls within a range of 200-500 km, the tariffs will be Rs. 3 per minute while for above 500 km it will be Rs. 4 per minute.

Calls from Reliance IndiaMobile to any international network will cost Rs. 16 in peak hours and Rs. 14 in off-peak hours for the SAARC regions and neighbouring countries while for the rest of the world it will be Rs. 18 in peak and Rs. 16 in off-peak hours.

All calls will have a pulse rate of 60 seconds.

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