Uninor to invest Rs 600 crore towards capex in current year

Uninor will be investing up to Rs 600 crore towards capex in the current year and majority of it will go into establishing new base stations, a top executive of the telecom services provider said today.
The company follows January-December year.
"On capex, we are investing approximately Rs 6 billion (Rs 600 crore) primarily into establishing new base stations across the six circles," Morten Karlsen Sorby, the new CEO of Uninor said in a press conference.
According to the quarterly reports of Telenor, the parent company of Uninor, the company has spent NOK 247 million (Rs 235 crore as per current exchange rate) during the first six months of the current year. The company follows January-December year.

"This year we have already invested heavily into new base stations. We have said that we will roll out 5,000 new base stations. That is increase of 30 per cent compared to the number of base stations we had," he added.
Telenor is about to receive an FIPB approval for increasing the stake from 74 per cent to 100 per cent in Uninor, he said.

On the 4G services, Sorby said that though testing of the services will take place in the current year, it has no plans to launch the commercial services of 4G in the short to medium term as the penetration of 4G-enabled handsets is still in the nascent stage.

"We will start testing 4G this year and we will not launch commercially. It is actually handset penetration which will decide when the 4G service will be launched in the Indian market. Because as on today, the number of 4G-enabled handsets are very limited in India. That will not dramatically change in 2015," he said.
Sorby said that the average revenue per customer for Uninor is in the range of Rs 107 to Rs 108.
As part of 'Customer First Day' celebration, Uninor today said it has launched 500 Wi-Fi-enabled stores out of which 100 are new retail outlets.
All walk-in customers into the stores will be able to experience the use of mobile Internet free of charge, access and download new applications and upgrade mobile softwares, Sorby said.

With a network of more than 1,500 stores and 3.65 lakh points of sale (pos), Uninor has the second largest distribution network in its 6 operating circles with a 42 million subscriber base, the telecom operator said.