| Indeed, there is no important road intersection or thoroughfare here that doesn't have a hoarding advertising services being offered by one mobile company or another. |
| The "war" started with Hutch's arrival a few weeks ago, and soon the pug 'Cheeka' was glaring down illuminated hoardings across the city. At many places, back-to-back hoardings have also been booked. |
| Typically, Hutch billboards have lots of white space, its new pink logo, the pug, and a simple announcement that "BPL Mobile is now Hutch" written in either English or Hindi. |
| Other mobile service providers such as Tata Indicom, Idea, Airtel, and Reliance Infocomm have almost re-launched their services taking up advertising space to counter Hutch's arrival. Their hoardings are more cluttered, listing their services or displaying celebrity endorsements. |
| "The market had almost crashed and we were reduced to offering a standard 20 feet by 30 feet hoarding for under Rs one lakh just to pay the municipal corporation tax and retain the site," said a hoardings contractor. |
| Hutch's arrival has not only changed this but made it difficult for regular summer season advertisers such as ice-cream and soft-drink companies to find good sites. |
| "They were all waiting for us to go to their doors and beg them for hiring our sites. They would have got them much cheaper than the last year's rates. Now they call everyday and we don't have the sites they want," said another top advertising agency executive. |
| Sources in cell companies said that it is not Hutch's assertive arrival alone that has the industry shaken up. "We knew they would be coming here after they acquired BPL's business. But their plans to ramp up services by adding infrastructure is what has got everybody aflutter," said a cell company executive. |
| Industry watchers point out that BPL Mobile was never the market leader in the region but Hutch's entry has been so assertive that it could easily be mistaken as being so. |
| Except for BSNL "� which is always slow in responding to such activities "� everybody has forgotten the end-of-the-financial-year syndrome and dipped into contingency funds without waiting for budget approvals from controlling centres. "We informed Mumbai and got the go-ahead in the last week of March," said a cell company executive. |
| Hutch, industry sources said, has announced that it would soon be introducing high speed data services based on EDGE technology, which is a step ahead than the present GPRS technology. Hutch had always wanted the Maharashtra and Goa circle but was outbid in 2002. It ended up with Mumbai, Gujarat, Chennai and Andhra Pradesh. |
| Top executives of Hutchison Whampoa have said that Hutch would increase investment in the newly acquired circle. "The investment this year will be equal to what we did in the last ten years," a high ranking official of the company said. |
| The main focus remains delivering better services. Number of cell towers are being quadrupled and market penetration improved. All towers erected by BPL will be changed through Nokia with which Hutch has a long-term contract for the latest technology. Five hundred towers are to be covered in three months. |
| Further, multi-layered Hutch outlets are also to be opened where the Hutch brand will be promoted and customers informed about BPL now becoming Hutch. |
| Value-added services such as caller ring back tone, polyphonic tones, data services, hutch alerts, horoscopes, stock market information, data services, sports news etc will be provided. The billing method will also be changed making it more customer friendly. |
| There are eight swanky mobile outlets which were opened as BPL Galleries in the city. Hutch will be rolling out multi-layered large format stores in an effort to re-design them. |
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