India’s overall telecoms sector is carved up into 23 circles, and according to top officials at the Mumbai-based telecoms arm of the Tata industrial conglomerate, the company will initially target money at expanding wireless networks in six key circles (a state or large city) and roll out CDMA-based mobile and fixed line services in 11 new circles by this summer.
Tata is likely to raise the money through debt and equity.
Tata Teleservices one of a dozen companies now competing for a slice of one of the hottest markets in the world. According to provisional forecasts by Gartner, the Indian domestic mobile market will have around 55m connected users by the end of 2004. Tata’s current user base is only a fraction of that, standing at around 1.5m.
Last week Nokia CEO Jorma Ollila picked out India as the fastest growing mobile market during a conference in New Delhi. Ollila was quoted as saying that over 80% of global mobile subscription growth coming from new growth markets like India (as well as China, and Russia) in the next five years.
Ollila also estimates that the number of mobile subscriptions in these countries will stretch to 2bn by 2008.
Espoo, Finland-based Nokia already leads India’s mobile handset market and is strongly positioned itself to take advantage of this growth having set up several R&D programs in the country.
This article is based on material originally published by ComputerWire
