The Hindu Business Line : MTNL prepaid emerges trumps

AN ambitious direct move to 3G (third generation wireless services) by MTNL may be just around the corner. But to speak of the present only, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd had to just announce the availability of its prepaid cellular connections again, when queues started to build up outside its exchanges in the city.

In the first 10 days of this month alone, the company has issued over 35,000 Trump (its pre-paid brand) connections, said Mr R.L. Dube, Executive Director, Mumbai, MTNL.

This somewhat vindicates what the employees' unions at the company have been complaining about all along - that MTNL could have swept the market had it moved swiftly by augmenting its capacity which has been left unaddressed for more than two years now.

MTNL's GSM subscriber base in Mumbai has remained 2.24 lakh plus for the last four months now while the leading competitors in the circle Orange and BPL Mobile have both crossed the one million mark. In the light of this, 35,000 connections in less than half a month is a feather in its cap for the company.

The capacity augmentation, by 4 lakh lines each in Delhi and Mumbai, happened only very recently, having been impeded several times by delays in the tender process.

Post-paid connections too will pick up by the first week of December when the company's billing system, now contracted out to the Kolkata-based Ushacom, is put in place, said Mr Dube. MTNL's CDMA wireless service Garuda will pick up around February next year when its 4 lakh line augmentation plan gets complete, he said.

An added advantage with Garuda will be that now Mumbai and Navi Mumbai will be under a single local calling area (SDCA) which was not so earlier and deterred quite a few customers from subscribing to it.

But MTNL does not plan a universal access licence for Garuda, for that would clash with its GSM service.

The other ambitious plan of MTNL is its broadband project for which it has placed a Rs 70-crore order with Ericsson for both Delhi and Mumbai, with two lakh connections targeted for each city. The mode of delivery will be `ADSL-2' technology, which, according to Mr Dube, will provide speeds of 20 mbps through copper of which MTNL has an ample network. But by far, the most exciting thing at MTNL is that it is processing a plan to move into 3G directly, and is mulling a plan for 4 million connections of W-CDMA in Delhi and Mumbai.

"We are working out the costs and viability," said Mr Dube. And if it is not found very attractive, the company will augment its GSM capacity by 4 million in the two cities, he said.

Although the country's cellular subscriber base has outstripped fixed line connections, the bulk of MTNL's Rs 935 crore capex plan for Mumbai for the current fiscal is for the landlines.

Landline is where the company is pinning its long-term hopes, said Mr Dube, despite his company having reported a net loss of customers for the first six months of the current fiscal.

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