The Hindu Business Line : Tata Tele (Maharashtra) reaches 1-million subscriber mark

The company's capex for the current year would be between Rs 700 crore and Rs 800 crore and this would largely go towards expansion of its CDMA mobile network.

Mumbai , April 6

TATA Teleservices (Maharashtra) has reached the 1-million subscriber mark for its Tata Indicom services, and is scaling up capacity to cater to more than 2.5 million subscribers by the end of the current year.

This turnaround also involved a huge clean up exercise in which a considerable amount of bad debt was waived of, said Mr Charles Anthony, Managing Director of the company, at a news briefing here today.

In addition, the company's percentage of monthly incremental subscriber additions rose from 4 per cent per month at the end of 2004, to 22 per cent currently.

The collection ratio (of customer debt), which was just at 40 per cent of dues as of September 2004, is now 100 per cent; and voluntary churn has been brought down to 0.6 per cent, said Mr. Anthony.

The company's capex for the current year would be between Rs 700 crore and Rs 800 crore and this would largely go towards expansion of its CDMA mobile network. The funds are available with the company; and the debt markets could be accessed if found necessary, said company officials.

The company is also concentrating on enterprise business in a big way. Data cards (which are CDMA-enabled cards) have already been sold to Tata Motors for the latter's tele data requirements; and to Zenith Computers, where they are being bundled with PCs, said company officials.

The company has customers such as Larsen & Toubro for which it is proving complete telecom solutions. Additionally, the company will be providing telecom solutions on an ASP model, and is already talking to corporates, said officials.

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