The Hindu Business Line : Hutch gains foothold in West Bengal

HUTCH is all set to stretch its cellular footprint to the West Bengal telecom circle, which comprises the whole of the State save the Calcutta telecom district, Sikkim and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. Hutchison Essar has bagged the licence for the West Bengal telecom circle for a fee of Rs 1 crore and a bank guarantee of Rs 50 lakh. It has been proposed to roll out the Hutch GSM mobile services in the circle around this year's Puja festival.

Stating this at a news conference here on Thursday, Mr Sandip Das, Executive Director of Hutchison Max Telecom Pvt Ltd, said a sum of $25 million-$26 million would be invested in the Hutch network in West Bengal in a phased manner.

He said the Indian cellular market had witnessed an exponential growth following the withdrawal of charges on incoming calls. From 28 million cellular customers at the beginning of 2004, the number of cellular users in the country was expected to touch 50 million by the end of the current calendar year.

Mr Das said Hutch had firmed up plans to invest Rs 1,800 crore in 2004 on its national cellular infrastructure, IT backbone and customer services network with a view to be in tune with the expected demand for new cellular connections. He, however, admitted that while the number of cellular customers was growing, the average revenue per subscriber in the post-paid segment had shown a downtrend. This was because use of the outgoing facility among new entrants was restricted.

More Stories on : Telecommunications | Other States

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
AirTel launches STD code search service in Delhi

Hutch gains foothold in West Bengal

Infosys `set to take on global giants'

Satyam board meet

SSA Global to expand India operations, get into BPO

Monsterindia records high traffic in January

Agilent to triple staff strength

Infy largesse is talk of the town

Peer pressure on cos?