India’s Tata plans US$2 billion network upgrades; targets 155 million subscribers

Tata Teleservices plans to spend INR80 billion (US$2 billion) over the next two years on its new GSM network and existing CDMA operations, in a bid to grow its subscriber base six-fold by 2011 to 155 million.

Tata Teleservices plans to build a nationwide GSM network in India, but has been delayed by the allocation of spectrum.

Approximately INR60 billion will be spent on a new GSM network to be launched by the end of the year, which the operator’s managing director, Anil Sardana, expects will garner 55 million users within three years.

The remaining INR20 billion will be utilised to upgrade the existing CDMA network with the view to counting 100 million CDMA subscribers on the network within three years. Tata currently has around 26.3 million subscribers.

Tata Teleservices applied for a pan-India GSM licence, but to date has only been granted radio spectrum in five of the country’s 22 licence circles, due to delays from the government.

“We do understand that there are security concerns in some of the states/circles where spectrum cannot be allocated,” Sardana commented. “But wherever it is available there should not be any delay as the government had earlier announced in January that enough spectrum is available in most of the circles to accommodate all the new players, as well as to meet the needs of the existing operators.”

Sardana added that the delay in allocation in other circles was placing the operator at a “competitive disadvantage” as its arch-rival Reliance Communications completed a soft launch of GSM services last week.

Tata Teleservices has also announced plans for the development of a WiMAX network covering 15 cities by 2009.