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Tata Teleservices (TTSL) which offers services under the brand name Tata Indicom in eight circles had 1,141,372 subscribers till 31 March 2004. This works out to an impressive 212 percent growth from the figures for FY 2002–03. VOICE&DATA estimates that the company´s revenues jumped by a spectacular 191 percent to reach Rs 698 crore.  

Tata Teleservices has also acquired unified licenses to operate in 12 new circles—Bihar, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Kolkata, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh (E), Uttar Pradesh (W), and West Bengal. The company plans to launch its services in the new circles by September 2004.

The company is making substantial investments to enhance network capacity as well as build a national footprint. The Tata Group has earmarked an investment of around Rs 9,000 crore for its telecom business, of which 75–80 percent will be used to augment TTSL´s network. The investment in the company, as of March 2004, totaled Rs 5,995 crore.

It has allocated Rs 1,700 crore for the Andhra Pradesh circle. The company has allocated Rs 200 crore for Delhi and Rs 743 crore for Gujarat. Its investment for Tamil Nadu is pegged at Rs 1,100 crore. The company has already invested in excess of Rs 820 crore in the Tamil Nadu (as on May 2004).

Tata Teleservices plans to offer services to over 1,000 cities in 20 circles by March 2005. It is expected that the company would have launched its services in the new circles by the last quarter of the calendar year 2004. The priority regions for the company are Punjab, Haryana, and Himachal Pradesh followed by Kolkata and Kerala. These are areas where the committed license fees are among the highest.

On the services front, TTSL hopes to capture over 20 percent of the wireless market (which includes both mobile as well as wireless fixed mobile phone services) over the next three years. In the month of May, TTSL added approximately 131,000 wireless customers. Fixed wirelines being still highly lucrative in the corporate telecom segment, as they have high bandwidth requirements, the company will extend its wireline presence selectively.

Tata Teleservices´ offerings include mobile services, fixed-wireless phones, public-booth telephony, and wireline services. Other services include value-added services like voice portal, roaming, postpaid Internet services, three-way conferencing, CUG, Wi-Fi Internet services, and data services. The company has recently launched a new push-to-talk service for corporates.

TTSL also has a very strong data-centric vision. Enhanced data offerings is expected to help them increase ARPUs. Currently, the ARPU is about Rs 500. Revenue from data, as of 2004, was two percent. Plan are on to increase this to about 5–10 percent by 2005.

TTSL is also moving to ensure that Wi-Fi becomes a viable model. They plan to open up over 300 hotspots across the country. The company also plans to launch prepaid FWP and public phone booths, new handsets, expand Wi-Fi across public hotspots, and new voice and data services. They are also developing a suite of business applications for the corporate wireless segment. These will be launched in the last quarter of the this calendar year.

The structure at the company, with the operations of the new acquired circles, will be further streamlined. All the circles will be divided in to eight hubs with each hub having a COO. And all the eight COOs will report to the business head of the company. Tata Teleservices has big plans lined up for 2004–05, but its success will depend on how fast they deploy and how quickly they ramp up subscribers.