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Journalism of Courage
NEW DELHI, JANUARY 14: Public sector Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd MTNL today announced it would roll-out cellular mobile services in Delhi and Mumbai by June. The company today gave the letter of intent for the turnkey project for design, supply and installation of the GSM system to Bangalore-based public sector ITI.
ITI has a tie-up with American Lucent Technologies which is its partner for supply of this first GSM order for ITI. The turnkey project of Rs 500 crore is likely to complete its roll-out in three years. During the first year, MTNL will pay Rs 82 crore for executing the order in both the cities.
On the proposed tariff structure, Rajagopalan said MTNL would provide the services at affordable levels. 8220;We are not trying to attract the customers of the existing private operators, but plan to expand the market with our attractive prices,8221; said Rajagopalan.
He said the company had approached the Government for expanding the area of operation beyond Delhi in the satellite towns of Gurgaon, Faridabad, NOIDA and Ghaziabad as is the case for other private cellphone companies.
Rajagopalan said the company also planned to expand to other cities when bidding opens up in the next round but ruled out acquiring stakes in companies for achieving this. The company also plans to spin off a separate business unit for offering telecom consultancy services not only to its customers but also to other companies.
8220;We would also look at other viable business propositions like leasing out our optical fibre capacity to companies in the near future,8221; he said.
On the basic services front, he said the company has provided two lakh connections during this year with Mumbai accounting for over 1.25 lakh connections.
He said the total new connections for the full year would touch four lakh connections before this fiscal.
MTNL is planning to get its New York Stock Exchange NYSE listing by February-end. The company will convert its GDRs to ADRs after this. The company is also exploring the option of launching an ADR issue but has not received the green signal from the finance ministry. MTNL has earlier called off its earlier GDR issue around two months ago owing to adverse market conditions. It is bullish about an ADR issue after its GDR price has moved to over 15 and the domestic share price today touched Rs 302.90 per share.
