Spice aims for No 2 spot in K'taka

Placed at the bottom, in the fifth place, in Karnataka, cellular mobile telephony service provider Spice Telecom now plans to aggressively push to become the second biggest operator.

"Between January and June, our performance has been very good. Our subscriber base has grown second fastest. With aggressive marketing and expansion plans, we are looking at the No 2 position in the state," Spice Telecom senior. vice-president (operations) Rakesh Singh said on Tuesday.

Speaking to Business Standard on the sidelines after the launch of the free Spice phone with a connection for Rs 999 in Mysore, he said a pioneer in introducing cellular mobile telephony services in India and presently operating in Karnataka and Punjab, Spice had a subscriber base of 1.2 million in Karnataka and three million in all.

"Our presence in Karnataka is in about 268 towns. We are planning to cover 100 more by December 2007.

The state has close to 1,000 key markets. We plan to penetrate into these key markets in a year's time. We have strengthened our distributor network and improving the infrastructure and technological backing."

"Similarly, we have a big focus on value added service like cellular back tune, incoming call block, launching of push mail and other facilities. Push mail will help the subscriber to receive mails on his mobile," he said.

The penetration of mobile communication is only 20 per cent in India, whereas it is as high as 60-70 per cent in China. This shows the scope for all telecommunication firms in India.

The best thing in India is even the rural people and those in small towns are adapting to telecom very fast. Mobile is no longer an urban phenomenon, Singh said.