Reliance Communications is in talks with equipment vendors for a significant expansion of its CDMA service. The talks revolve around 30 mn new CDMA lines.
NEW DELHI: Reliance Communications is in talks with equipment vendors for a significant expansion of its CDMA (code division multiple access) service, it is learnt.
The talks are revolving around 30 million new CDMA lines.
Industry estimates put the project cost at around $1.5 billion.
Reliance Communications has not commented on the issue despite repeated tries. Although this CDMA major had been working aggressively on GSM (global systems for mobile communications) expansion, it is believed to have kept that plan on hold till uncertainties related to spectrum allocation are removed.
Reliance is believed to have earlier floated a mega GSM tender estimated at over $6 billion.
Announcing the financial results for the company recently, the group chairman Anil Ambani had said that Reliance would roll out GSM services in the new circles within a year of spectrum being allotted.
At present, Reliance offers GSM in eight circles of the country. Last year, it had applied to the government for spectrum across the country to roll out GSM services.
Meanwhile, over 42 mega hertz of spectrum (for both 2G and 3G) will be vacated by the Defence for civilian use by July, according to communications minister Dayanidhi Maran.
A spectrum policy is also likely to be put in place by then. The policy is expected to talk about spectrum allocation in the case of transition of technology platform (eg CDMA to GSM), among other things.
The spectrum policy is expected to give a clear direction to Reliance Communications’ expansion plans.
Currently, Reliance Communications has over 25 million CDMA subscribers (after disconnecting 4 million users in March due to non-verification) and
Reliance Telecom (also controlled by the Anil Ambani group) at around 4 million subscribers. While the group offers its CDMA services across the country,
its GSM operations are present in eight circles.
At the end of March 2007, there were a total of 206 million phone subscribers, out of which 166 million were mobile users.
With wireless players like Bharti and Vodafone Essar making long-term market leadership projections, Reliance Communications too is believed to be planning big to tap a large chunk of the growing Indian telecom market.
According to government projections, there would be 500 million phone subscribers in India by 2010.
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