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Tata Tele to pump in Rs 375 cr in TN circle — Hopes to reach 1m subscribers by end of this fiscal

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Mr M.A. Madhusudan, Chief Operating Officer, Tata Teleservices Ltd - Tamil Nadu and Kerala Circle, at a press conference in Chennai on Wednesday. — Bijoy Ghosh

Chennai , June 8

TATA Teleservices Ltd, which offers CDMA-based (Code Division Multiple Access) mobile and fixed wireless phone services, plans to invest Rs 375 crore in the Tamil Nadu circle in 2005-06. With this, its total investment in the State will go up to Rs 1,475 crore.

The investment will be used to roll out its services in more towns and also increase the number of base tower stations to improve network coverage.

According to Mr M.A. Madhusudan, Chief Operating Officer, Tata Teleservices - Tamil Nadu and Kerala circles, the company's services will be available in 300 towns by the end of this financial year against 150 now.

It will add 260 towers during the year, taking the total number of towers to 760. The company's target is to increase its number of subscribers from four lakh now to 10 lakh by the end of this financial year.

Nearly 60 per cent of the new subscribers will be for mobile services and the balance for fixed wireless phones. Of the subscriber base now, mobile subscribers account for one lakh and those for fixed wireless phones the rest.

Mr Madhusudan said there would be increased focus on mobile business during the year and the company would shortly offer a facility for its mobile subscribers to migrate from post-paid connections to a pre-paid service.

Tata Teleservices earns about Rs 22 crore of revenue a month in the Tamil Nadu circle. It has 400 corporate customers who contribute about Rs 3 crore a month to the revenues.

Mr Madhusudan said the company's tie-up with Sivaji Productions to co-promote its latest Rajnikanth film, Chandramukhi, has paid "dividends". The brand recall for Tata Indicom, the company's mobile service, was extremely good during April and May, when the co-promotion was on.

To a question, he said the company had complied with the directions of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India about its fixed wireless phone service. The company was now informing its subscribers, both existing and new ones, that they could not use the fixed wireless phone outside the premises in which it was meant to be used. However, he said, there had not been any impact on the subscriber growth because of this.

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