Tata Indicom to make fresh investment of Rs 35cr in Guj

Telecom service provider, Tata Teleservices Limited, has announced that the company will be investing additional Rs 35 crore in Gujarat to set up 100 cell sites by August 2009. The company had earlier made an announcement of investing Rs 125 crore in the state till March 2009.

"Apart from investing in value-added services (VAS), we are also investing an additional Rs 35 crore in Gujarat to set up 100 cell sites by August this year. This is over and above the Rs 125 crore investment that we were supposed to make till March 2009," said Naveen Bhasin, Gujarat circle head for Tata Teleservices Limited (TTSL).

On the VAS side, the company has tied up with product development and engineering services provide, Impetus Technologies to launch services for rural VAS market in India.

The service, Mandi Bhav, targets farmers and related communities to provide updated information on current prices of various commodities across the country. The application, available on various platforms including J2ME, BREW, WAP and SMS, will provide prices of over 200 commodities from around 3,000-odd exchanges in the country, including over 300 in Gujarat.

To be offered for Rs 30 per month on subscription basis, the multi-lingual application will support around nine major Indian vernacular languages, said Prem Rathi, associate director - business development of Impetus Infotech India Private Limited.

The application has been developed by mLabs, Impetus' mobile and wireless technologies group, which works on innovations on different mobile platforms including iPhone, Android, J2ME, BREW, Blackberry RIM, Symbian, Windows Mobile and Flash Lite.

TTSL, which expects around 60-70 per cent of additions in subscriber base to come from rural areas, will be launching the application in Gujarat and other circles.