Tata Tele to roll out GSM services by month-end

NEW DELHI: India���s second-largest CDMA telecom operator Tata Teleservices on Wednesday said it would launch mobile services on the popular GSM platform by end-June under the Tata DoCoMo brand. Tata Teleservices, in which Japan���s NTT DoCoMo has a 26% stake, has already invested close to $2 billion to roll out a pan-India GSM network.

The CDMA operator said it plans to launch commercial services on the GSM platform in a phased manner, starting with South India, followed by western and northern regions. ���We expect to complete our pan-India rollout by the end of this year,��� Tata Teleservices��� president for GSM operations Deepak Gulati said. Currently, TTSL is India���s sixth-largest mobile operator with 35.7 million subscribers as of end-April on the CDMA platform. Close to 70% of the country���s 403-million mobile subscribers use the GSM platform.

DoCoMo���s managing director of its global business division Toshinari Kunieda told ET that the Japanese telco was planning to launch its famed i-mode services in India. Popular in Japan, i-mode is a mobile internet service that offers users access to email and other content, including sports, weather forecast, games, financial services and ticket booking. It has millions of subscribers in Japan and over 95,000 internet sites provide content for this platform. ���It may not be possible to introduce i-mode in its current format in India. We are looking at customising it for the market here,��� Mr Kunieda added.

Since its first launch outside of Japan in 2002, the i-mode service has been introduced in Asia, Europe and the Middle East. In fact, NTT DoCoMo shares i-mode technology and knowhow with overseas partners in countries such as Taiwan, Philippines, the

Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, Greece and the UK, among others. Apart from i-mode, Mr Kunieda also said that the Indian entity would leverage the Japanese operator���s expertise in the 3G space. According to him, DoCoMo may also bring in various high-end handsets for data applications for TTSL customers in India. ���We have a wide range of tie-ups with handset manufacturers. We can customise some of these handsets for the high-end market here,��� he said. He also did not rule out the possibility of DoCoMo bringing the Google phone ��� a handset using the Android operating system ��� to India.

Mr Kunieda also said that DoCoMo had no plans to raise its stake in TTSL beyond the 26% it currently holds.
Asked if the Tatas planned to list TTSL, its managing director Anil Sardana said this would depend entirely on its shareholders. ���In due course, every Tata company has followed that route and we will also follow it,��� he said, declining to share any timeline for the plans. On the possibility of the company participating in the 3G auction, Mr Sardana said it would depend on how the auction shapes up, availability of spectrum and the reserve price.