Reliance Communications launches GSM telephony in Mumbai

Telecom operator Reliance Communications (R-Com), belonging to the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (R-ADAG), Sunday launched its much-awaited GSM mobile telephone services here.

This comes within days of the company announcing Dec 30 the launch of its GSM services across 11,000 towns in the country.

R-Com also launched a plan that it says “offers up to 100 percent savings to sub-Rs.300 ARPU (average revenue per user) mobile customers in the city of Mumbai at a one-time subscription charge (including GSM SIM) of Rs.25”.

The plan offers Rs.900 minutes of talk time on local calls and SMS to any network that can be accrued by Reliance Mobile GSM customers in daily tranches of Rs.10 spread over 90 days.

In addition, customers opting for the plan can make unlimited calls between 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. to any Reliance phone in Mumbai, Maharashtra and Goa, the company said.

R-Com had Dec 30 launched GSM mobile telephone services spanning 11,000 towns and over 340,000 villages with a capital infusion of Rs.10,000 crore (Rs.100 billion/$2 billion).

Chairman Anil Ambani, who launched the services from the Reliance Centre here, said the rollout happened six months ahead of schedule, with the company having secured the frequency spectrum for the services only in January.

"What has taken other companies 15 years to achieve, we have completed in less than 15 months," Ambani said, adding that the GSM telephony will complement the group's CDMA offering to give customers a wider choice.

"This massive GSM rollout marks the completion of our over Rs.10,000 crore worth of investment programme," he said. "We will be doubling our coverage to 24,000 towns and 600,000 villages over the next few months."

The CDMA network of Reliance Communications, the country's second largest mobile phone company in terms of subscriber base, spans over 20,000 towns and 450,000 villages with 60 million clients, as per the company's website.

"Now, CDMA and GSM will be one integrated operation, one integrated brand," Ambani said.

The launch of GSM services came just two days after the 76th birth anniversary of the company's late founder Dhirubhai H. Ambani. It was on his 70th birth anniversary Dec 28, 2002 that Reliance had launched its mobile phone services.