Tatas plan Rs 9000 cr telecom investment

The Tata group plans to invest Rs 9,000 crore in its telecommunications venture, Tata Teleservices Ltd, in two years.

The telecom company would also extend its services into 12 more circles by January 2005 at a cost of about Rs 5,000 crore. With this, it would have presence in 20 circles of the country.

"The planned capital expenditure for the current year is Rs 14,000 crore, of which Rs 9,000 crore has already been spent. The remaining amount would be invested in network expansion," Amit Bose, President ( Telecom ) Tata Teleservices said at the launch of the push to talk (PTT) service in Delhi.

Bose said that the company would launch the PTT services in 150 towns in three months and about 1,000 towns by the end of the current year. The service has already been introduced in Mumbai and Pune.

The service allows subscribers to communicate with up to four people, anywhere in the country without dialling their numbers. The service would be provided at specially designed push-to-talk enabled handsets.

While a PTT enabled CDMA handset is available at a price range of Rs 4,000-Rs 5,000, the GSM handset providing a similar service, costs about Rs 15,000, he added.

Bose said that initially the company would target reaching corporate and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) through its post-paid services.

He added that the company was in talks with many companies such as Xerox, IBM, GE, Pepsi and Morgan Stanley for using this service.

He also said the company would progressively look at the youth and the mass segment, which it would try reaching through its pre-paid offering.

While the Post-paid offering would involve a fixed monthly rental of Rs 99 with a Rs 5,000 handset, in the pre-paid service the handset would cost Rs 4,000 and the PTT service would be provided at a *cost of Rs 3.30 per day.