Reliance Infocomm targets 20 million users by 2006

Mumbai: Reliance Infocomm Ltd plans to expand its network to tap galloping demand in the world''s fastest growing major wireless market, a top company official said on Monday.

Reliance Infocomm, 45 per cent owned by Reliance Industries Ltd, started offering wireless services in 2002 and has a presence in 1,850 towns and cities and 75,000 villages in the world''s second most populous nation.

"Reliance Infocomm plans to cover 5,700 towns and cities and we should be there by the last quarter of this year," Kamal Nanavaty, chief operating officer of the Bombay-based firm''s wireless business, told reporters.

"We are at 10 million users and by March 2006 we should be at 20 million."

More than 1.9 million new users entered India''s 48.5 million strong mobile market in December, lured by some of the cheapest call rates anywhere in the world. The customer base is widely expected to cross 80 million by December 2005.

Nanavaty said Reliance''s network would also cover 400,000 villages by December to soak up demand for connectivity from vast tracts of rural areas where fixed-line networks haven''t reached.

The expansion would be partly funded by the 240 billion rupees ($5.48 billion) the firm had earmarked for the telecoms business in 2002, he added.

Over the past four years, mobile services have been the main driver for increasing teledensity in the country where only eight in a 100 people own a telephone connection.