Comments
Sistema Shyam Teleservices Ltd (SSTL), a joint venture between Sistema of Russia, Shyam Group and the Russian Government, on Wednesday launched its high-speed mobile broadband service in Andhra Pradesh, as part of its Rs 30 crore fresh investment in the State.
The service was launched in eight cities in the State, including Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Tirupati and Guntur. “With this, MTS has become the first telecom service operator to provide high speed mobile broadband services at Tirumala Hills,” Mr Atul Joshi, SSTL's Chief Sales Officer, told press persons here.
MTS is the global telecom brand of Mobile TeleSystems of Russia. In December 2008, SSTL brought the MTS brand into India under a brand licence agreement MTS. It currently offers the broadband services, under the MBlaze brand, in 130 towns across the country, including 60 towns in south India.
According to the Telecom Authority of India's recent report, the broadband penetration in India stands at just 0.8 per cent, against the teledensity of 60.99 per cent. This translates to a mere 10.3 million broadband connections by the end of 2010. The national Broadband Plan envisages provision of 160 million broadband connections, including 60 million wireless broadband connections, by 2014.
“Hence we see exciting opportunities in the high-speed mobile broadband services. We will remain a data-centric company with profitable voice services,” Mr Joshi said.
Recently, the Russian Government picked up a 17 per cent stake in SSTL for $ 600 million. “The process of shares transfer to the Russian Government is expected to get closed by the end of this month,” he said.
On its IPO plans, he said the company will come out with an IPO by the end of this year. The size and time of the offering have however not yet been finalised.
The company is offering MBlaze World Cup pack—on recharging with Rs 798, customers will get 5 GB data usage free. Additionally, for every Indian victory in the world cup, MBlaze customers will get 250 MB data usage free.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.