Reliance Infocomm gains rural ground

Private telephony major Reliance Infocomm has garnered over one million subscribers from rural and semi-urban parts of the country till November, with West Bengal circle topping the chart with 1.5 lakh subscribers.

The Anil Dhirubahi Ambani Enterprises group (ADAE) company commenced its rural foray in January this year, positioning its CDMA products and services, along with services such as its R World suite of applications and MMS services on a Java platform.

"The rural and semi-urban areas were our primary focus during the year, a shift from our last year's focus on urban and metro markets. We are also mulling on setting up an extensive retail distribution channel in the rural sector with an intention to reach out to every village in the country," said Sanjeev Govil, head -rural marketing, Reliance Infocomm, here today.

While West Bengal circle topped the charts, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh closely followed suit with 1.35 lakh and 1.2 lakh subscribers. Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Orissa registered the maximum number of customers, though the subscription numbers of which were not revealed by the company.

Reliance claims that the CDMA technology had helped it garner the subscriber base, apart from easy availability and installation of its wireless services.

R World suite of applications, which enables accessing the Net and watching of video clipping over the phones, are also a hit in the rural areas, while SMSes and MMSes also played their part in raking in the numbers.

The growth has been fuelled by "affordable acquisition costs and attractive tariffs", while the rural markets also posted an increase for refurbished handsets.