Videocon to invest Rs 500 cr in telecom infrastructure

Videocon Telecommunications Ltd (VTL) plans to invest Rs 450-500 crore in telecom infrastructure creation in Tamil Nadu over the next 16 months till end-2011.

According to Aravind Santhanam, chief operating officer (Tamil Nadu circle), VTL, the company has so far invested around Rs 500 crore and will invest another Rs 450-500 crore to increase its tower strength to 5,000 from the current 3,250.

"We are also looking at using infrastructure of other companies to increase penetration," he said, after launching new international call rates for its Tamil Nadu subscribers.

The company, which launched its telecom services in the state in March, offers a call rate of Rs 1.69 per minute for calls made to Singapore and Malaysia and ten paise per second for calls made to Gulf region.

The calling voucher for US/Canada is priced at Rs 57, while it is Rs 22 for Singapore and Malaysia.

Santhanam said the new tariff rates were designed “to encourage our subscribers to talk more. It is not a strategy to rope in new subscribers."

The company has more than one million subscribers in Tamil Nadu, Santhanam said, making for an ARPU (average revenue per user) of Rs 100. Videocon Telecom has around three million subscribers across seven circles in which it operates.