Having faced licence cancellation post 2G spectrum debacle in 2012, the Norwegian telecom major Telenor Group maintained long-term plans on India investments and informed that its goals on investments made so far in India for subsidiary Uninor have already been accomplished.
In an interaction with BusinessLine , Telenor Group India's country representative officer, Rajiv Bawa maintained that licence cancellation gave the company more clarity about Indian market and helped the company chalk out a different strategy to emerge successful in the market.
Notably, Uninor recorded its first annual operating profit at ₹855 crores for 2014. Its average revenue per user increased by six per cent during 2014.
According to Bawa, it was a tough call to take after the licence cancellation, but the company decided to differentiate itself from rivals and cater to the masses with affordable tariff.
“As we are here for a longer term, our plan is to first tap the masses where mobile telephony penetration is less. Affordability is what our customers want from us,” he said.
Unlike its competitors in the market, Uninor, which has a subscriber base of 44 million in six circles of India, is not currently considering to jump into the fray for 4G. “We are not in a hurry to jump to technology advancement. Voice will continue to be our focus in coming months. Most revenue comes from voice. However, data is growing but that holds 7-8 per cent of the revenue. Our customers want voice and data at most affordable rate,” Bawa said.
Uninor is present in six circles namely, UP (West), UP (East), Bihar (including Jharkhand), Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat with more than 24,000 network sites. Also it has acquired the circle in Assam but its commercial launch is yet to happen.