Tata Teleservices aims to have five million subscribers in next five months to start earning profit on investments. This is being done through massive expansion programme in non-metro centers and wooing more subscribers in metro centers through of better value added services, said Ajay Pandey, president, Tata Teleservices. Pandey was here for the Orissa launch of Tata Indicom, the brand under which the company provides its telephony services in the country. Orissa is among the 12 new circles in which the company intends to launch its telephony services soon. 

The other circles being added to the Tata Indicom’s bouquet of services include are Bihar, Haryana, Himachal  Pradesh, Kerala, Kolkata, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh (East), Uttar Pradesh (West) and West Bengal. “We have already launched the service in Bihar and the next is Orissa. By January end, next year, all the circles will be fully operational,” Pandey said, adding this will give the company a national foot-print. The only regions the company has no immediate plan to go are Jammu and Kashmir, Assam and North East.

We expect to add about one million subscribers through these new launches in next two months and then reach the critical mass of five million subscribers over next five months, Pandey said. The company, at present, has a 2.7 million subscribers base in eight key circles it is operating now. They are Andhra Pradesh, Chennai, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Mumbai, New Delhi and Tamil Nadu comprising 70 per cent of the telecom revenue potential of the country.

The company has already invested about Rs 9,000 crore in building the infrastructure and network in eight existing circles and intends to invest another Rs 2,400 crore for providing the service facilities in 12 new circles. Pandey, however, pointed out that recently the non-metro centers have shown a robust telephone subscribers growth rate compared to metro centers. Keeping in line with this trend the company has shifted its focus to the non-metro centers, he added.