How was the last financial year for Reliance and what was the mantra to attract over 10 million customers in a short span?
Last year was very important for us. We became the front-runners in the mobile industry with Infocomm becoming the number one company. There were various factors that attracted over 10 million customers to our company. We innovated in various areas and those ideas clicked with the users. Not only customers other companies also followed our ideas. Things like simplified tariff structure, unlimited calling schemes and half vouchers were instant hits with the customers. And,
we take pride in these types of innovations.

What is the post-paid and pre-paid split?
We have taken off both in post-paid and pre-paid segments. The combined success of both has made us number one in mobility business. Our pre-paid additions were highest in the industry. The split in number of acquisition has been 70:30 in favor of pre-paid customers.

How has been the churn rate for Reliance?
The various tariff structure and recharge options have been very successful and customers have been with us. As an industry telecom is very volatile. In GSM there has been a lot of churn but in CDMA the churn rate has been very low. For us the number of handsets sold is an indication of how many customers we are acquiring. We have the widest range of handsets starting from Rs 2000 to Rs 10,000. The variety has kept the customer interest high and so the churn rate has been low.

What is current strength of the company? What is the network coverage?
The total employee strength is around 42,000. And now we have a new management team to lead the company. We have built a network with minimum or no drop rate, it is congestion free and, of course, the capacity is huge. We had accounted for the rise in demand and factored that while planning the network.

At present we cover 3,500 cities and by December 2005 we would be covering another 5,700. We are building our network in J&K where we have got the license. In 2005 we connected Andaman and Nicobar too. The island is connected via satellite to the main land and within the island there is an OFC network.

How has been the performance of the data part of your business?
There has been lot of planning to build upon the data segment for the company. And ever since its launch it has done extremely well. There has been lot of focus on data customers and we have sizeable numbers. Again for us handsets have been very important in this success. Almost 80 percent of handsets are data enabled. There are close to 240 Web World where the customers can experience our data offerings. They can surf the net, send MMS video clips and even see TV clips on their handsets. But most customers need information on the services and have to be cared for. The Webworld Express is part of this endeavor and we have almost 1,200-1,300 of these retail outlets for us now.

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