MTNL to invest Rs 20 bn next fiscal

MTNL today announced another round of expansion in GSM mobile phones and said up to Rs 20 bn would be invested in the next financial year.

"We are growing much faster as compared to our rivals in the private sector. We added 44,659 new customers in January this year in Delhi only and this formed 53% of the total added subscriber. Similarly in Mumbai our addition was 50,102 in January," MTNL CMD R S P Sinha said, adding if this trend continues we may require additional capacity much sooner than we expected.

Asked what plans the corporation had to ensure that MTNL's capacity does not become a problem, Sinha said we shall be inviting tenders soon. New capacity of four lakh lines each in Delhi and Mumbai should be completed within first half of 2005-06, Sinha added.

According to Sinha, in January, against MTNL's 53% share in the net adition, Bharti managed to take away only 15% (12,992), Hutch only 10% (8,275) and Idea added 18,599 new subscriber in Delhi.

In Mumbai also, the private players were far behind MTNL space.