MobileFirst Aims to Touch 1Crore Subscribers

MobileFirst, the first ever alliance formed by the leading cellular operators - BPL Mobile, Escotel, RPG Cellular and Spice Telecom, expects to touch one crore subscribers within a year, said Dilip R Mehta, MD, RPG Cellular. Currently, the alliance has a network of three million subscribers across 700 towns in the country. Besides that, Hutch and Idea have also entered into strategic partnership with MobileFirst, which adds to another three million subscribers into their network. 

Speaking to the press during their launch in Chennai, FB Cardoso, President and CEO, BPL Mobile termed MobileFirst as an alliance of trailblazers of the cellular revolution. The alliance partners have brought virtually every new product or service in the cellular industry. Added value services like the first SMS, MMS, prepaid roaming, mobile Internet, Youth and Women products, co-branded credit cards, etc. have been the pioneering efforts of one of the partners in MobileFirst. "Similarly, we have been the first in technology too - Intelligent Network (IN), General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), CAMEL Phase II (CAP 2), Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH), Enhance Full Rate (EFR), Intra Circle Roaming (ICR), etc. are some to name a few. Even in Customer Service we have many firsts to our credit - Service Guarantee and Six Sigma, ISO 9002 Certification, Best in Class - TRAI QoS Survey, Inter Circle Service Contiguity, Bilingual billing. We will leverage these services to unlock the value of the three million subscribers. Presently MobileFirst, has 77 percent of the subscriber base."

Inspite of the formation of the alliance, each partner would continue to remain as a separate entity. According to the partners, it is a purely operational alliance and has been formed firstly, to leverage the reach, and secondly, to increase in size. The opportunity of MobileFirst is that it has 900 Mhz of network and it can share the infrastructure, systems and solutions. The customer tariff would be disclosed in 10-days time where it would maintain three elements - clear cut customer benefit, competitiveness and it will be a tariff which would help the market to expand, i.e. bring in more usage. 

(CNS)