MTS eyes 30% revenues from data services

MTS, one of the latest entrants in the telecom sector, is looking at 30 per cent revenues from data services soon.

Keshhav Tiwary, COO, Sistema Shyam Teleservices - Kolkata and West Bengal, said, “We have just launched our data services in West Bengal cicle. We expect data to contribute 30 per cent of our total revenues soon.”

The company has so far invested Rs 160 crore in West Bengal. It has 1,200 cell sites in the state, all of which are shared with other service providers.

“The West Bengal market has a teledensity of around 45 per cent, like it is nationally. So there is enough scope for us to find a space in this state although we are one of the later entrants in the telecom services space,” Tiwari said.

“We have around 9 lakh subscribers in Bengal now and our target is to reach 1 million subscribers by April,” Tiwari added.

The company has offers with Samsung, ZTE, among other handset manufacturers. Sistema Shyam Teleservices is also expanding its service brand MTS to six new districts of North Bengal. The launch will see the rollout of services in 80 towns and 1200 villages of the region.

The six districts that comprise the company’s new service areas include Coochebehar, Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling, Malda, Uttar Dinajpur and Dakshin Dinajpur. The foray marks the availability of the MTS brand in 10,000 towns and villages in 18 districts of the state, in addition to Kolkata, where services have already been launched. Subscribers can reach out to any one of the 25,000 retail outlets to avail connections.

MTS provides mobile telephony services in six other countries, and has a subscriber base of close to 100 million globally. Sistema Shyam TeleServices (SSTL) is a joint venture company between Sistema of Russia and Shyam Group of India, where Sistema is the majority share holder with a 73.71 per cent equity stake, along with the Shyam Group, holding a 23.79 per cent stake and the remaining 2.5 per cent being public partake. SSTL has spectrum to provide mobile telephony services in all the 22 circles across the country.