Journalism of Courage
Uninor,the Indian arm of the telecom major Telenor,which entered the Indian market three months ago with a joint venture with Unitech,will foray into western India by June. The company opened its first zonal office in Cyber City in Magarpatta here on Monday,which will drive the operations across Maharashtra and Goa.
Uninor has 2G spectrum in 21 out of the 22 circles and will be looking to consolidate its customer base that has touched 3.6 million across the eight circles that it operates in.
We will be building a good distribution network and will also come up with six more regional hubs in the western region. We will start operations in other circles by the end of next year,thereby having a pan-India coverage, he said.
As part of its business strategy,instead of constructing their own mobile towers,Uninor will be sharing the towers of Wireless-TT Info Service,a wholly owned company of Tata Teleservices Ltd and Quippo Telecom Infrastructure Ltd,with which the company has entered into an agreement.
Our strategy is to reduce time-to-market by ensuring a swift,cost-efficient rollout of our services and thus we have tied up with other established players. We stuck a deal with Wipro for providing us IT services and infrastructure. Currently,we are using 22,000 towers and another 20,000 will be added soon, said Sande.
The company has recruited 350 persons for the western region and has earmarked an overall investment of Rs 15,500 crore. The company is also gearing up to launch its GPRS service in the country.
At present,Uninor services are available in the eight circles of UP (West and East),Bihar,Orissa,Tamil Nadu,Karnataka,Kerala and Andhra Pradesh,where it is offering local calls at 29 paise a minute and STD calls at 49 paise a minute.
