After nearly one year of preparation, Anil Ambani is all set to roll out Reliance Communications’ (R-Com) GSM services in 11,000 towns across the country on Wednesday. The service will enhance RCom's product portfolio from the CDMA segment to the more popular GSM segment, which is adding 10 million users a month. He also confirmed that the company will bid for 3G spectrum in both the GSM and CDMA segments and will spend around Rs 2,000 to Rs 4,000 crore for the purpose.
"You will forget the Rs 501 offer," Ambani said when asked how affordable the new services will be. RCom is known for breaking the price barrier by offering both services and handsets at very affordable rates by giving subsidies on handsets. Ambani promised to shake up the GSM segment with RCom's entry. "Bundling handsets is a core competence of our CDMA service. Undoubtedly, we will bring bundled handsets to GSM in 2009," said Ambani.
Announced nearly a year ago, GSM rollout had seen R-Com set apart Rs 10,000 crore. "Most of the amount has been committed already. we will invest a few thousand crore more as we rollout the services to more cities," Ambani said. With the launch on the last day of the year, Anil Ambani has kept his promise of launching GSM in 2008 itself.
Launching GSM services had been a high priority for the younger Ambani after RCom bet on the CDMA technology initially. However, the technology platform did not take off due to many constraints, primarily the near absence of big manufacturers such as Nokia and Sony Ericsson from the market. The equipment ecosystem failed to develop due to strict licensing policies by Qualcomm, which invented the CDMA technology.
Ambani added that the current network rollout as also been carried with the help of traditional RCom vendors such as Alcatel-Lucent, ZTE, Huawei and Sun Microsystems.
Ambani refused to give subscriber projections saying that seven out of 10 new mobile subscribers today are coming in the GSM segment. "We would like to see another 100 million subscribers added to RCom in 2009 including CDMA," he said. Currently, the company has 60 million subscribers.
On branding, Ambani said all the mobile offerings will be under one brand, Reliance Mobile. He added that the company's current GSM offering in the North East, Reliance Telecom will be brought under this brand.
