Heartthrob Sania poses for Tata Tele

HYDERABAD: In yet another move to attract mobile users, Tata Teleservices Ltd has announced the national launch of signature series of handsets consisting of its new brand ambassador and tennis player Sania Mirza and the existing ambassador Saurav Ganguly.






The Saurav Fone, a handset sourced from Kyocera, is priced at Rs 2,449, while Sania Fone is a LG handset priced at Rs 4,999.

Tata Teleservices Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka circle COO Prabahat Pani said, "The signature series titled Sania Fone and Saurav Fone represent youth and energy and these are mainly to target the youth customer base. These mobiles are offer users cricket and tennis content including wallpapers, ring tones live cricket scores, news and contests. Not just this, the users will also get an opportunity to meet the personality associated with the handset."






Tata Tele presently has a customer-base of over three million and is looking at increasing its presence to nearly 1,000 more towns in the next 12 to 18 months. The company entered Andhra Pradesh in May 2004 and so far has covered 215 towns and is planning to cover 225 towns by the end of March.





It may be recalled that the Rs 64,350 crore Tata group has so far invested Rs 9,000 crore in the telecom sector and has also charted out plans to invest an additional Rs 9,000 crore over the next couple of years to fuel further expansion.





Commenting on the company's late entry into the mobile space, Pani opined, "The Indian mobile subscriber base is growing at a faster rate to that of China and this is a recent development. This was not the scenario five years back. Though it's a late entry we are of the belief that it's a timely entry."