Leading telecom operator Uninor will invest Rs.600 crore in capex in India during the calendar year 2014, its CEO Morten Karlsen Sorby announced Thursday.
The majority of the investment will go into establishing new base stations across six circles, he told reporters here.
"We will roll out 5,000 new base stations this year. This will be 30 percent more than the the number of base stations we had," he said.
Telenor, the parent company of Uninor, has already spent 247 million Norwegian Krone (about Rs. 235 crore) in the first half of the current year.
Uninor, which has a subscriber base of 42 million, is also investing in new point of sale, retail outlets and towers.
Sorby said Telenor had got approval from the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) to increase ownership in Uninor from 74 percent equity to 100 percent. He, however, did not give a time frame for the transition.
He said the revenue growth in India was 40 percent in the first half of 2014 but did not reveal absolute numbers.
He said the company wants to focus more on internet services as the same are witnessing big growth in India but said it has no plans to launch the commercial services of 4G in the short to medium term as the penetration of 4G-enabled handsets is still in the nascent stage.
Unionor launched 500 wi-fi enabled stores across the country Thursday, which was celebrated as Customer First Day. Of them 100 are new retail outlets. All walk-in customers into the stores will be able to experience the use of mobile Internet free of charge, access and download new applications and upgrade mobile software.
The telecom operator also started a dial 121 service to enable the customer do a self-help exercise to access their account, get customised tariff plans, activate and de-activate add-on services.
With a network of more than 1,500 stores and 3.65 lakh points of sale, Uninor has the second largest distribution network in its six operating circles.
