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It has been only a year-and-a-half since the launch of Reliance IndiaMobile´s services and just more than a year since it went commercial. Yet, few would like to describe Reliance Infocomm, the service enabler, as a ‘nascent organization´, such is the size of the operations now. Reliance Infocomm created history by getting more subscribers than Bharti during the fiscal 2003–04. By the end of March 2004, the former had 6.46 subscribers as compared Bharti´s 6.5 million subscribers.

Most of Reliance Infocomm´s subscribers were in the postpaid segment as the prepaid services got launched only in February 2004. Talking of the company´s penchant for announcing super targets, the approach is now beginning to look tactical, with only a fraction of that getting achieved. Nevertheless, such projections helped it generate the needed hype and grab useful mindshare. Having said that, the company is quite capable of chewing up the target if it actually gets it…the underlying infrastructure is robust enough to take the load, barring, of course, some teething problems on the business support systems (read billing) front.

According to the V&D-IDC Mobile Users´ Satisfaction Survey published in VOICE&DATA January 2004, Reliance had the highest incidence (24 percent) of billing complaints among all mobile service operators.

Reliance Infocomm clocked services revenues of Rs 2,707 crore during the fiscal 2003–04. Since the wireline services component was negligible during the period, most of its revenues came from the CDMA mobile services and international long-distance (ILD) services and national long distance (NLD) services. Of these, VOICE&DATA estimates that CDMA services accounted for Rs 2,242 crore, including the mobile-Internet services component. ILD revenues were about Rs 288 crore.

Reliance´s strategy of bundling the handset with services worked well, more so after the introduction of the Rs 501 scheme. While LG remained the biggest vendor with which Reliance tied up first for shipping of handsets, similar tie ups were made with four more vendors. These were Samsung, Nokia, Motorola, and Kyocera. Not only did this allow Reliance to demand ewer features on the handsets, it also gave it more bargaining power in terms of handset pricing.

On the value-added services front, the company strengthened its R-World suite of Java-based, mobile-Internet applications. It now comprises a host of data applications and multimedia applications. R-World also showcases a mixed bag of games like arcade, board, puzzles, cards, casinos, and sports. These have been very popular and well received by all game enthusiasts. The RIM Prepaid supports the same set of data applications that are available for postpaid users of IndiaMobile.

Around January 2004, Reliance Infocomm got State Bank of India to do pilot installations of a few ATMs using CDMA connectivity. The pilots ran successfully for about four months. In February 2004, State Bank of India deployed India´s first floating ATM in a ferry between Kochi and the nearby Vypeen Island, using Reliance Infocomm´s wireless connectivity.

Later, in April 2004, SBI entered into a tie up with Reliance Infocomm for connectivity of 100 ATMs across the country. This could well be the beginning of migration of ATMs from VSAT-based connectivity to wireless connectivity, of which Reliance hopes to get a big share. However, security concerns still weigh over the benefits like mobility, cost, and speed of deployment, and a large-scale adoption of CDMA for ATMs will happen only when such concerns get effectively addressed.