TTSL - 7 : Boom Time

Voice&Data Bureau

05 Jul 2010 05:04 IST

New Update

TTSL has had a string of successes since the beginning of the year. Tata
Teleservices' services revenue increased by 2.4%. Its revenue in FY 2010 touched
Rs 6,900 crore from Rs 6739 crore. This is despite a drastic drop in voice
tariffs, due to price wars and volatile market conditions. The beginning of the
year saw the signing of TTSL's strategic alliance with Japan's NTT DOCOMO, which
has helped the company acquire an almost 50:50 ratio in its CDMA and GSM space.

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Besides, the partnership with NTT DOCOMO will help in leveraging 3G and NGN
technologies, based on the latter's expertise. Virgin mobile announcing its GSM
services earlier this year under the TTSL brand, was another achievement for the
company.

With price wars ruining operators' revenues, TTSL also went ahead and
launched the per-second billing, but interestingly went ahead and extended this
to their other platforms like BlackBerry and Samsung Android, with a pay-per-use
concept and unlimited talk plans for Tata Indicom subscribers.

Tata DOCOMO also launched dive-in stores to showcase varied product offerings
in May this year, with an investment of Rs 100 crore towards the same.

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TTSL -
7

Highlights

Partnership with NTT
DOCOMO will help in leveraging 3G and NGN technologies
Partnership with Future Group was a significant milestone
Looking for 4G

Some of the innovative products and services launched by TTSL in the year
have been Photon TV and Photon-on-Mobile, allowing access to high-speed Internet
connectivity on mobile phones. Tata Walky was another innovative product which
comprises of a cordless phone with in-built FM stereo, available to both
post-paid and pre-paid subscribers. The product has helped reinstate TTSL as the
leader in the fixed wireless telephony space. DIALOG, a product that enables
customers to connect to the internet on their television, was yet another
first-of-its-kind product, which the company feels would help to push 3G data
services.

As VAS continues to be touted as the savior to boost falling ARPUs, TTSL
introduced Push 4 All Mail, earlier this year, enabling Tata Indicom and DOCOMO
customers to access their Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo emails on any type of handset
via SMS Push 4 All Mail. This service has helped boost the company's focus on
triple play towards voice, video and data.

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For rural areas, TTSL has been instrumental in telemedicine, m-education,
m-wallet and m-banking, and is also working with experts towards disaster
management services, like tsunami warning signals picked up from
electromagnectic waves, and weather warnings to fishermen. It also introduced
mandi-bhav for farmers, to help them get the best prices for their produce,
according to daily market rates, besides tying up with MCheck and Suvidhaa
Infoserve for microfinance services and pre-paid recharge services in rural
areas.

We will launch more products soon

MD, Tata Teleservices, Anil Sardana

Please share some success strategies
that helped you achieve this position?

This year dawned with TTSL beginning to show the benefits of two years
of careful planning and implementation of efforts to realign its business
strategy and streamline its processes to prepare for a leaner future. The
year saw the signing of TTSL's strategic alliance with Japan's NTT DOCOMO,
The year also saw us hiving off our tower business, in a unique reverse swap
deal that saw the WTTIL-Quippo kick-off operations as the country's largest
independent tower company, and one with the highest tenancy ratios in the
industry.

Financially, TTSL is not doing well...

The revenue share we are witnessing from our subscribers-in the first
few circles that we launched services in South India-will see the EBITDA
becoming positive within a year of the launch. This will be a record of
sorts in the Indian telecom industry-and it goes to show that a large number
of our subscribers are high ARPU individuals, discerning customers looking
for differentiated services. It is also heartening to note that of all our
new subscribers on the Tata DOCOMO network, as many as 45% have enabled GPRS
on their connections and are healthy data users; thus leading to higher
ARPUs. I am also happy that our older CDMA business under the brand name
Tata Indicom is now cash positive. All this augurs well for our overall
balance sheet and we are delighted with the way things are progressing.

What are your expansion plans for the coming year?

Our expansion plan involves two simple elements-one, to ensure that our
network is one of the best in the industry (similar to our CDMA network,
which has been rated as the 'Least Congested' for six straight quarters by
the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India); and two, to continue to liberate
customers and be refreshingly different. We intend to do the latter by
bringing in the best products and services into India, and by innovating
repeatedly. Our network architecture has been done along with consultation
and support from our partner, NTT DOCOMO. The bottomline is that, TTSL
stands for a seamless customer experience, and we hope that clarity will
come in soon on Chinese equipment imports, and that our network footprint
expansion on both CDMA and GSM platforms-which was stalled for over six
months-will begin again.

TTSL has redefined pricing in India. What are the new offerings?

We have already changed the pricing paradigm with our
'pay-for-what-you-use' concept and innovative products like the Samsung
Android, BlackBerry Bold, BlackBerry Curve and Windows 6.5 powered handsets,
and also unique solutions such as diet-sms, i-channel and Docomics, etc.

We hope to bring in more products from NTT DOCOMO soon-like the hugely
successful i-mode suite, m-wallet, i-concierge, etc.

Please state some of your main setbacks in the last fiscal and some of
the prominent challenges you see yourself facing in the near future.

No setbacks as such to speak of. However, the lack of clarity on the
regulatory front, especially on 2G spectrum allocation, continues to be a
deterrent. The Indian telecom space has evolved into a competitive
landscape, where only the fittest survive. Sadly, success is dependent as
much on the efforts of the operator as on external issues which shape the
very environment the business functions in. In such a scenario, it is
imperative that policy makers and the government ring in regulations that
spur the growth of the sector.

The year also saw the partnership with retail giant Future Group for T24, for
TTSL, for mobile telephony with the ad slogan 'Talk more, Shop more', retail
outlets all over the country, and it is about to launch commercial services.

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TTSL will definitely stand out this year for offering to take charge of
managing the project to roll out cable network free of cost for defence, for
which it is awaiting a response from DoT.

TTSL is also throwing its support behind Trai to kick-start the process for
4G mobile telephony, as the company believes this will help India to be on par
with the rest of the world in terms of high-end services.

TTSL was also active in urging the government to lift the ban on Chinese
telecom equipments to ensure fair play among operators. TTSL's most recent
launch is for Ethernet leased lines in ten cities. With all these achievements
and efforts to achieve more, coupled with a steady growth rate of approximately
2 mn subscribers per month, TTSL hopes to reach a subscriber base of 75 mn by
the next March.