MUMBAI: The landscape of the Indian telecom industry is set to change. And with it, the economics of communication. The Rs 65,000 crore Reliance group formally announced its infocom initiative- Reliance Infocomm, on the eve of late Shri. Dhirubhai Ambani’s seventieth birth anniversary. Specifically, Reliance Infocomm announced the launch of its limited mobility service branded as Reliance IndiaMobile, presently available in 673 cities nationwide. The services were officially launched by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and the networks were activated by Union Minister for Information and Communications Technology Pramod Mahajan.

A day ago, the TRAI mandated a call rate of 40 paise per minute at 15-second pulse. Accordingly, Reliance Infocomm revised its call rates. The star attraction is the ‘Dhirubhai Ambani Pioneer Offer’, available up to March 2003, under which for an initial payment of Rs 3000, one gets a free digital mobile phone (worth Rs 10,500) and unlimited free incoming calls. For a monthly payment of Rs 600 thereon, one gets 400 minutes of outgoing talk-time that includes all local calls, all state long distance calls, and long distance calls to any Reliance phone in the country. Over 40 per cent discount is being offered for national long distance calls where Reliance network does not exist. And unused minutes can be carried forward till the end of the quarter.

All the value added services like voice-mail, Internet access, call hold, call divert, call conferencing, caller line identification, and text messaging are free. The company has developed a suite of applications – a set of basic applications will come in free for a period of three years. An incremental set of applications will be free for the initial 90 days. Such applications include audio streaming, video streaming, web-browsing, news, ticker services, and games.

A handset exchange program whereby one can exchange old handsets for international long distance calls worth Rs 7200 is an added attraction. That’s not all for the early adopter. They are also entitled to a mega-saver coupon book with discount coupons worth Rs 1 lakh from leading lifestyle brands and branded retailers.

The Dhirubhai Ambani Pioneer Offer is intended to gather the critical mass of customers. The bookings would officially start from January 15, 2003 onwards and the Pioneer Offer is valid till March 2003. The Pioneer Offer is also available on upfront payment. The two other schemes are: the “regular” scheme with an upfront payment plan covering only talk-time and the ‘standard’ plan which is a monthly payment plan.

Under its license agreement, Reliance Infocomm is not allowed to offer roaming facility as in cellular phones. Services can, therefore, be availed only within the SDCA (short distance charging area). The same handset can however be used in any other SDCA.

The Reliance IndiaMobile service will be available only on CDMA 2000 1X handsets specially imported by Reliance. The phones, currently from Samsung and LG, are light, sleek, Java-enabled, multimedia-ready and have other advanced features.