Reliance Communications to spend $ 1.5 bln on CDMA

New Delhi, Oct 31 (UNI) Anil Ambani owned Reliance Communications will spend a whopping 1.5 billion dollars on Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) network expansion, company sources today said.

As on september 30, 2006, the Company had 26 million wireless customers on its network, representing a market share of 20.5 per cent of the wireless market in Indian.

About 3.5 million wireless customers (net) were added during Q2 FY 2007, which is more than double the net wireless additions of 1.6 million subscribers in the corresponding quarter last year.

Users of wireless multimedia services increased further to 8.1 million as on September 30, continuing the upward trend in usage of these services by customers.

Revenues of the wireless business increased 44.7 per cent from Rs 1,778 crore (387 million dollars) to Rs 2,574 crore (560 million dollars).

In the ILD business, the company maintained its leading market share of more than 40 per cent in the US to India retail customer calls segment.

Domestic long distance business saw a 20 per cent growth in volumes in Q2 FY 2007 compared to the previous sequential quarter on stable net realisations.

The quarter saw a further increase in traffic routed on our own network.

During Q2 FY 2007, Reliance communications commissioned FALCON, the world's largest private submarine cable system to be constructed in the last five years.

FALCON was launched four months ahead of schedule, and at 80 per cent of the projected cost.

It has 14 landing stations providing much needed international connectivity to 12 countries in the fast growing Gulf region and de-bottlenecking capacity between India, the West Asia and Europe.

UNI/RT PKS VC1920