Tata Teleservices Ltd will continue to promote CDMA technology even as it depends on GSM to drive volume growth. CDMA is key to its growth plans in the data segment, according to Rajan Gupta, COO, TTL,Tamil Nadu.
Speaking to Business Line here on Wednesday, he said TTL believed that it could provide “distinct consumer experience” in both the technologies.
He felt that CDMA technology would “play a very key role in data” and it was already doing so. TTL has also invested in it “significantly in many, many markets”.
He said GSM was a mass technology and it was growing much more than CDMA and the company would continue to ride both technologies.
While CDMA has a role to play in voice traffic as some find higher voice clarity in it, TTL sees for it a key role in data transmission. As a sector, data would grow much faster than voice. The idea was to free CDMA bandwidth more and more for using data.
Asked about the tie-up Tata Docomo, the telecom brand of TTL, had with Dell India, Gupta said Dell laptop buyers were offered Tata Photon Plus mobile broadband connections at a special price. This was “working very strong” and it was part of the company’s strategy to accelerate its growth through alliances.
It also has such tie-ups with a few other laptop manufacturers.
He said TTL had also built a distribution alliance with Hindustan Unilever Ltd in rural areas.
Questioned about persistent rumours about Telenor joining hands with TTL for joint operations, he said ‘no comments’ and added that there was no additional information other than what was available in public domain on this issue.
On the growth of TTL in Tamil Nadu, he said in the past 15 months, revenue-earning consumers had nearly doubled. It had also invested in expanding its physical infrastructure and Tata Docomo had more than 11,600 sites and was also renovating the stores.
TTL has rolled out new prepaid and postpaid offerings for its GSM customers in the State. While prepaid customers it offered Talktime plus, internet plus and unlimited plus plans with different price points, for post-paid customers 4 variants of Unlimited Plus plans would be available at a monthly rental of Rs 899.