Tata Teleservices Ltd, the telecom arm of the Tata group, will launch its GSM service in two months, said Lloyd Mathias, the company’s chief marketing officer.
Tata Teleservices Ltd (TTSL), the telecom arm of the Tata group, will launch its GSM (global system for mobile communications) service in two months, said Lloyd Mathias, the company’s chief marketing officer.
He said the service, being launched with the help of the new equity partner NTT DoCoMo, will be a completely new brand. “The GSM brand will have nothing to do with Tata Indicom,” said Mathias. Tata Indicom is the company’s code division multiple access (CDMA) brand.
He said the marketing teams for CDMA and GSM are being kept separate, as the company is targeting the higher end of the market with its new offering. Mathias said TTSL’s progress has been smooth in most of the circles, with spectrum yet to be allotted in Delhi and a few towns in Rajasthan. “We are conducting trials in many places and are on track with the launch of the service in two months in multiple circles. However, the total roll-out process may take 12-18 months,” he said.
GSM services are seen as a do-or-die for TTSL and Reliance Communications (RCom), the two big CDMA operators in India. While the CDMA technology had many advantages, such as a superior technology allowing greater traffic for the same amount of spectrum, the two big players found themselves left behind in the race for subscribers. “CDMA operators did not realise the importance of handset variety,” said Mathias, adding that the company is working with Samsung and other vendors to address the issue.
He, however, felt it’s too early to write off the platform and said TTSL would continue to use CDMA for voice. TTSL’s strategy will be different from that of RCom, which too migrated to GSM five months ago. RCom, which has an integrated Reliance Mobile brand in CDMA and GSM, had gone in for a big bang roll-out in 11,000 towns on the first day itself. It also continues to push GSM as the main engine of growth for its voice services, while using the CDMA spectrum to enter the yet-to-be-touched wireless broadband market in India. Mathias said Tata’s roll-out will be gradual and it will continue to rely on CDMA for continued growth in the voice segment as well. “It will take us around 8 months to cover the top 800 population centres and at least a year to equal our CDMA coverage. So, it is not possible for us say that from now on, all the voice customers will be added to our GSM service,” he said.
Mathias added that he expects around 130 million new subscribers to join the wireless club this fiscal and 3G to be operational only by this time next year. “The current year is going to be the bumper year and subscriber additions may decline to 80 million or so in the following year,” he said.
Mathias said the two cornerstones of his GSM strategy are co-branding with other corporates and high-speed data. “If we go to the market and say, ‘We will give you free airtime’, we will be sunk. So we are looking at the market and saying, ‘Are there certain niches in the market we can play in?’,” he said. “High speed internet is going to be a huge focus area for us and as 3G won’t be operationalised this year, we believe that having both CDMA and GSM will be a differentiating factor for us,” Mathias said.
Meanwhile, even as traditional GSM operators wait for spectrum to start high-speed 3G services, both RCom and TTSL have rolled them out on their CDMA spectrum. Unlike GSM, CDMA allows 3G services to be started without replacing the network hardware.
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