Tata Tele Unveils Indicom as National Brand

The telecom services of Tata Teleservices Ltd (TTSL) would now be coming under the brand name Tata Indicom. The launch of the national brand coincided with the launch of its basic telecom services in Tamil Nadu Circle. PS Ramamohan Rao, Governor of Tamil Nadu who made the first call to Sumitra Mahajan, Union Minister of State for telecommunications on her tour to Indore, inaugurated the service. TTSL would soon be launching its range of products and services across three other circles namely, Karnataka, Gujarat and New Delhi. 

Tamil Nadu happens to be the second stop for Tata following Andhra Pradesh, where its services are being offered. Indian telecom scenario according to S Ramakrishnan, Managing Director, Tata Teleservices is lagging behind other developing countries. Where the teledensity penetration in Brazil is 47.8 percent, China is 20 percent, Philippines is 21 percent, and India is behind with just 4.5 percent penetration. "So we see a great market potential in telecom. Moreover we have presence across the entire telecom value chain - international bandwidth, national backbone, ILD, NLD, basic services, cellular services and Internet services. By 2007 we intend to capture 10 million customers," he added. Tata, which had applied to the Tamil Nadu Government for RoW clearance, has as of now not received any communication from the government, said JJ Irani, Chairman, Tata Teleservices. “We are pressing the government to give us clearance to start landline connection without which we would have to depend on wireless technology to provide the service,” he added. 

TTSL would offer its services in a phased manner that includes CDMA Mobile and fixed wireless and WLL service, Wireline, Data Services including ISDN and DSL and integrated telecom solutions and virtual private network. In phase one it would launch its services in over 25 markets in the state by mid 2003 — Coimbatore, Erode, Salem, Madurai, Trichy (including
Chennai). 

The monthly rental of CDMA mobile would be Rs 200 per month with free incoming calls, outgoing at Rs 1.20 per minute and no air time charge. 

(CNS)