At & T Aims At 1m Cell Subscribers In Western Region

The cellular services of AT&T Wireless Services, to be marketed in India under the AT&T brandname, are expected to be operational this month.

Birla-AT&T Communications Limited, a 51:49 joint venture between the Aditya Vikram Birla group and AT&T Wireless Services, will begin offering the cellular services in cities of Gandhinagar, Ahmedabad, Baroda, Surat, Pune, Nashik, Ahmednagar. It will also service the Kolhapur highway in Maharashtra and Panjim, Goa.

The company, a provider of wireless voice, advanced messaging, aviation communications and wireless data services in the US, is a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T. The company will offer cellular service along the highways between the major cities connecting Gujarat and Maharashtra with Mumbai, company officials said.

 

The Birla-AT&T network, which is based on the `GSM-Global System for Mobile Communications' standard has installed the latest generation MSCs (Main Switching Centres) in Pune, Goa and Gandhinagar, company executives said. The MSCs have already been tested and integrated into the network. The project will, in the first three years, include 350 cell sites across the two states.

The joint venture company - a member of the nine way roaming alliance called World1 Network - will provide a "seamless" roaming service to subscribers in every major city in India, covering 85 per cent of the country's cellular footprint. Birla-AT&T was awarded the cellular licence in December last year. The joint venture firm has committed one billion dollars as licence fee over the ten year period and another $515 million as the cost of establishing the network and other related services. The company recently increased its total paid up capital from $150 million to $232 million. A request has now been made to the Foreign Investment Promotion Board for increasing the company's equity to $343 million.