Tata Tele achieves break even, targets 10 lakh customers by next fiscal

Hyderabad: Tata Teleservices Ltd (TTSL) has reached operational break and is targeting to double its customer base to 10 lakh customers in Andhra Pradesh by the end of the current fiscal year.

Prabhat Pani, chief operating officer (AP and Karnataka circle) of Tata Teleservices told newspersons that Tata Tele's plans were on track and that it would expand to 166 towns in the state from the current 50 towns by December this year. The company is also investing Rs446 crore on its operations in the state.

Tata Tele will also expand the total number of cell sites to around 400 from the existing 212 cell sites across the state. Pani said the company had achieved tremendous success in the state even though it does not offer a prepaid mobile connection. He said once the company launches the prepaid mobile card its growth would be faster.

Tata Tele offers mobile, fixed wireless phones and wireline services under the Tata Indicom brand in eight circles in the country including Andhra Pradesh.

He said that of the total customer base of five lakh, 1.9 lakh customers used fixed wireless phones (FWP), while 1.3 lakh wireless fixed phones with the rest using mobile phone services.

"At present, Tata Tele has a dominant presence in coastal Andhra. Expansion in Telangana and Rayalaseema regions, launch of new value-added offerings and pre-paid service would propel the company's growth in the future," Pani said.

Pani added that Tata Indicom's success can be gauged from the fact that the company had added one lakh new customers in just five months from February to July this year, as compared to the company's achievement of its first one lakh customer base in 2001 which had taken a span of 25 months.

Referring to the ongoing tussle between GSM and CDMA operators CDMA technology offers wider spectrum and is the more efficient of the two technologies and not only had faster transfer rate of data, images and video but also come at cheaper costs. This advantage was attracting more customers under its fold, he said.

Launching a new FWP instrument on the occasion he said, "Tata Tele is also offering Internet facility on FWPs across the state. The company will also soon launch a new service for corporates called Push-to-Talk (PTT), he added