MTNL on expansion mode, to add 4 million GSM lines

New Delhi, Apr 25 (UNI) State-owned telecom company MTNL, which operates in Delhi and Mumbai, will soon finalise the tender for four million cellular lines by mid-May.

MTNL will add two million cellular lines each in the two cities. The contract for Mumbai will go to ITI-Alcatel, under government rules that 30 per cent of new capacities be reserved for ITI, which has a manufacturing JV with French major Alcatel.

Of the total four million lines, about 1.5 million will be for 3G (third generation) networks, which enable people to download video clips, music, pictures and graphics on their cellphones at very high speeds.

The four million lines would be split into two million each for the two mega cities.

Instead of dividing the contract for Delhi and Mumbai circles into two vendors each, MTNL has decided to give one entire circle to ITI-Alcatel to avoid technical and compatibility issues, MTNL CMD RSP Sinha said here on the sideline of the Company's conference here.

All the major vendors are participating in the process.

MTNL's Dolphin cellular service has grown fast. There has been a increase of 1, 059,459 subscribers during this year which is 120.16 per cent.''The income from cellular services has gone up almost two fold from Rs 287.4 crores to Rs 561 crores an increase of Rs 273.6 crores,'' Mr Sinha said.

MTNL has 1.94 million subscribers at the end of March this year, up from 0.88 million in March 2005 0.48 million subscribers in Mumbai and 0.40 million in Delhi.

MTNL has increased their share in both the cities over the past one year. At one million subscribers, MTNL has over 18 per cent market share now (from about 12 per cent last March) in Mumabi. In Delhi the company has ''snatched'' a market share of over 16 per cent (from about 9 per cent), at 0.93 million subscribers.

As on March 2006, there are 211936 broad band subscribers, up nearly 40 times over 5,374 subscribers as on MArch 2005. Income from broadband services during this year is RS 70.78 crores.

In March, 2006 there were 3,81,253 landline subscribers as compared to 4,015,173, which had gone down due to surrendering and increasing use of mobile phones. The income from these service for 2005-06 reduced from Rs 5592.4 crores during 2004-05 to Rs 5249.4 crores during 2005-06.

There has been a six per cent decrease in income due to reduction in tariffs, Mr Sinha said.

In future MTNL will go in for Multi Protocol LAte Switch (MPLDS), Next Generation Networks (NGN) and Broad Band Digital Loop Carrier (DLC).

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