The Hindu Business Line : Tata Tele services in 3 more circles

TATA Teleservices Ltd , the private telecom services provider, is on a major expansion drive that would see it roll out services in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Kolkata shortly.

This would give it a truly pan-India presence covering 20 circles, excluding Jammu and Kashmir and the North East region.

Addressing a press conference here on Thursday to announce the expansion plans, the Chief Operating Officer of Tata Tele, Mr Prabhat Pani, said, "With this addition of new circles, we would effectively cover 20 out of 23 circles and invest about Rs 4,000 crore in the expansion that would take the coverage to 1,000 cities across these circles."

From barely 49 towns with 809 cell sites and a capacity of 1.3 million in December 2003 the coverage has gone up to 525 towns with over 2200 cell sites and a capacity of 4.04 million, reflecting over a ten-fold growth in towns.

Tata Teleservices also announced the completion of four corridors providing continuous coverage across a 1400-km stretch in the State. These corridors cover Hyderabad-Warangal, Hyderabad-Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam-Vijayawada and Vijayawada-Tirupathi.

The company had announced a total investment of Rs 445 crore in the AP circle earlier in 2004 and expects to top the one-million subscriber mark before the end of this fiscal.

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