Reliance Communications and Verizon to provide data roaming in the US
19 Oct 2007
RCom''s
customers can now connect to the Internet through their
mobile phones, while travelling in the US.
According to RCom president S P Shukla, the company has
partnered US telecom giant Verizon to provide these roaming
data services. He said that the company was the first
CDMA operator in India to offer data roaming facilities
to customers travelling to the US. RCom''s customers can
now seamlessly connect for making calls, checking e-mails
or even surfing the net, while travelling in the United
States.
RCom had introduced international voice roaming services
in the US two years ago, with charges that were 67 per
cent lower than competitive GSM telecom operators.
Shukla said that following the US, RCom proposes to launch their international data roaming services in Canada, to soon be followed by Latin America, and later across Asian countries like Japan, South Korea, and China, along with other countries that use CDMA technology for their mobile phone networks.
As part of their agreement with Verizon, international data roaming will also be provided to visitors from the US who travel across India. Once this facility is launched in other countries, the same courtesy will be extended to travellers from those countries.
According to Shukla, an estimated one million business visitors travel to the US from India, some more than once a year. On average, they spend Rs1,500 to Rs2,000 during each visit, to get seamless connectivity using a local network in the US. These business visitors can now use RCom''s international data roaming.
Shukla added that by launching the international data roaming services, Reliance plans to leverage its leadership in the domestic wireless data segment to secure a first-mover advantage in the largely untapped international data roaming segment.
RCom sees a huge growth potential for this segment, and is planning an aggressive communication strategy targeting frequent business travellers to the US. The communication strategy would include direct mailers to software companies, and to members of frequent flyer programmes of airlines.
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