Uninor starts mobile services in India; calls at 29p/minute

Uninor, a Norwegian-Indian joint venture, today became the latest entrant in the country's highly competitive mobile telephony market, where it would offer GSM services at rates as low as 29 paisa per minute.

Uninor is the first among those who were offered licences last year to launch services. It will be operating in seven circles.

"The company has launched operations in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh East and West, and Bihar including Jharkhand," Telenor Group CEO and President Jon Fredrik Baksaas said.

Uninor is a JV between Norway's Telenor and India's Unitech.

The network of Uninor will cover a national footprint of close to 600 million subscribers from day one, he said.

To find its bearing in the cut-throat market, the company introduced two tariff plans. 'Talkmore@29 paisa' would allow users to make calls at 29 paisa a minute and STD (national long distance) calls at 49 paisa a minute.

The other plan 'Callmore @ 29 paisa' also offers local calls at 29 paise per minute and STD at 49 paise per minute with a daily rental of Rs two.

"The launch of Uninor mobile service marked significant milestone for our joint venture," Sanjay Chandra MD Unitech said.