GSM race heats up

With the launch of Tata-DoCoMo, the GSM brand of Tata Teleservices Limited, the race in the GSM segment is igniting, especially on the tariff front. So far, the company has unveiled pre-paid cards, offering tariffs that are compelling enough to lure a new user.

The new service has brought the STD rates to all time low in India so much so that the difference between local and STD charge seems to be diminishing. According to the company's announcement, all calls, on any network and irrespective of the place in the country, would be charged 1 paise per second. The company offers this minus any additional charge for the service.

It seems the company has more surprises for the Indian market. It is likely to unveil its post paid tariff plan in a fortnight. It is expected that the post-paid service shall have no rental charges, a user will pay as per use.

TATA DOCOMO, recently launched its commercial operations in India, beginning with Chennai and Tamil Nadu. The company's Next Gen GSM service started with TTSL Managing Director Anil Sardana making the first phone call from TATA DOCOMO's 3G-ready network to Union Minister for Telecommunications and Information Technology Thiru A Raja. TATA DOCOMO's pan-India service rollout will be completed this year, with South Indian Circles going 'live' in two-week's time.

Tata-DoCoMo would become the fourth player in the country having pan-India presence, after the role out of services in the country by the end of year. At present only Airtel, Vodafone-Essar and Reliance have pan-India presence in the GSM segment. Besides, it would be the second player in the country offering both GSM and CDMA services. Reliance Communications was the first one to launch its pan-India GSM operations in December last year.

Tata-DoCoMo leveraging on its partnership with NTT-DoCoMo, which is having more than 53 million customers (as of March 2008), which is more than half of Japan's cellular market, is positioning its product as ready to 3G network. NTT-DoCoMo, is a global name as far as next generation services are concerned.

(For more details on this read August issue of Voice&Data)

akhileshs@cybermedia.co.in