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Thomas K Thomas

Jaipur, Sept. 30 Shyam Telelink, the joint venture mobile company between Russian conglomerate Sistema and Shyam Group, on Tuesday launched its CDMA based cellular services from Rajasthan and declared a tariff war on existing players.

The company, which is among the few companies which had recently bagged telecom licences to offer mobile services, has announced that it will offer local calls at 50 paise a minute, making it the cheapest tariff available. The company will also offer SMS at 50 paise compared to Re One being charged by most of the existing players. It has also bundled a handset with the lifetime validity package for Rs 999.

“India is a highly price-sensitive market. Our tariffs would be the lowest, with no hidden charges and our services will speak for themselves,” said Mr Vsevolod Rozanov, President & CEO, STL.

Mr Rajiv Mehrotra, Chairman, Shyam Group said, “The tariffs can fall further if the regulator makes the termination charge cost-based which would be less than 10 paise a minute from the current 30 paise and the same can be passed on to the customers.” Termination charge is paid by a service provider to another operator on whose network the call ends.

Shyam will roll out its network in South India next quarter and cover other parts of the country in one year. The company has invested $1 billion in setting up the network, which has been bought from Chinese equipment provider ZTE. Mr Vladimir Evtushenkov, Chairman, Sistema SSA, said that the company would invest another $1.5 billion by 2009.

While the company has launched its service under Rainbow brand, Sistema is looking to bring its global cellular brand MTS. A decision on this will be taken in one month. Rainbow is the existing fixed line telephony brand of Shyam in Rajasthan, which is now being extended to its cellular services. Sistema said that it was also interested in venturing into the GSM cellular segment but was ready to wait for the Government to find spectrum.

Shyam has applied for dual technology which will enable the company to offer both CDMA and GSM services. Mr Evtushenkov said that Sistema wants to bring its manufacturing arm, Sitronics, into India and was looking to form a joint venture with Shyam’s manufacturing arm.

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