Tata Tele plans Rs 750 cr capex

Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra), the last entrant in the mobile service segment, has planned a capital expenditure of Rs 750 crore in 2005-06.

The company intends to invest largely on strengthening its network and IT to capture the growing mobile segment in the country. It has already crossed one million customer mark in Mumbai and Maharashtra.

Charles Anthony, managing director, said the company was planning to add "upward of one lakh subscribers per month. Since December 2004 , we have been adding 100,000 gross customers per month and have crossed one million subscribers six days ahead of scheduled target."

Anthony pointed out that the company has shown aggressive growth over the past five months, which has reflected in incremental market share growing from 4 per cent to 22 per cent.

While its overall market share is around 11 per cent in February 2005. The growth has come despite the slowdown on push-to-talk (PTT) . "Whether PTT happened or not, we were able to achieve the target. We have taken up the PTT issue and are doing lot of paperwork", he added.

Tata Teleservices has also brought down its voluntary churn from the level of 6 per cent to as low as 0.65 per cent. "We have definitely done better than the industry standards. We have also cleaned up our bad debts to give a good shape to the company", Anthony claimed.

The company is scaling up its network capacity to cater to the needs of more than 2.5 million subscribers by the end of the year. The company plans to expand its mobile services from 135 towns to 175 in 2005-06.

On rural sector too, the company has bagged a tender from Department of Telecommunications for five districts including Ratnagiri, Kalyan, Jalna and Pen in Maharashtra. The company has to set up the network within six months and wiping out waiting list within the next 9 months.

Of the incremental market share, 75 per cent of its subscribers base are post-paid customers and 25 per cent are pre-paid users. Anthony pointed out that the goal of the company was to have 60 per cent post-paid subscribers and 40 per cent pre-paid users.

"We have a long way to go and there is a tough and healthy competition in the market. Next year will be the real year and if we have the same momentum, I think we will be home comfortably", Anthony added.