Mobilink Joins Hands With Beltron Paging

Close on the heels of forming an alliance with Punwire Paging Services Ltd, Mobilink, the Sanjay Dalmia group paging service provider, has joined hands with Beltron Paging to widen its network.

After this new venture, Mobilink will be able to reach areas of Patna, Varanasi, Ludhiana, Amritsar and Nagpur, Mobililnk managing director Pravin Kumar told PTI.

A Bihar government undertaking, Beltron had run into rough weather following some problems with the department of telecommunications (DoT) which led to its licence being revoked. However, DoT has now restored the licence, Kumar said.

With this alliance, Mobilink can provide paging services to 266 cities in the country by the year end. We are also thinking of extending the services to Orissa and West Bengal, he said.

 

Earlier this month, Mobilink had embarked on an All India paging service, hand in glove with Page Me of the Punwire Paging Services Ltd and Punwire Mobile Communications.

The new services, though come at a price, are aimed at those who have not considered paging as an effective mode of communication. This will help us resolve the image issue, he said.

Mobilink, like most of the service providers, is still in red and is expected to break even with the number of subscribers going up to 400,000, Kumar said, adding the company had around 2,25,000 subscribers now. To enhance its user-base, Mobilink would launch three language services - Kannada, Telugu and Bengali - shortly, he said.

While Kannada service is slated to be launched next month, Telugu would be introduced in May and Bengali in July this year, Kumar said.

The company has invested around Rs 150 crore in its operations and has recently pumped in another Rs 5 to 6 crore in the new venture with Punwire, he added.

Mobilink, a joint venture between SK Telecom of Korea, Samsung Electronics and the Sanjay Dalmia group, would share revenue with Punwire on the basis of expenses incurred.

About 10-20 per cent of the existing customers are likely to opt for this new service, Kumar said.