Reliance to launch WLL in Delhi by Jan-03

NEW DELHI: Reliance Infocomm is all set to launch its WLL services in Delhi on January 15, 2003 tentatively. Initially there would be two schemes for the city. In the first, a customer would pay Rs 21,000 upfront. In the second scheme, the customer has to pay Rs 3,000 upfront as the membership fee and submit 12 post dated cheques over three years for Rs 1,800.

In both the cases the customer is entitled to 400 minutes of talktime every month (including long distance calls) for a period of three years, plus a handset worth Rs 12,000 as part of the deal. The total talk time for three-year period works out to be 14,400 minutes. Back of the envelope calculations show that deducting the price of the handset from the scheme, one minute of outgoing is pegged at Rs 0.63. If the 400 minute per month talktime is exceeded, there would be a charge of Rs 1.20 for every three minutes. Incoming would be free in both the plans.

Jasmeet Singh, a highly placed official within the company, informed that it has also finalized a deal with the coffee chain--Quicky's, which would address the broadband requirement and provide web-related services. There will also be several web stores as secondary point of sales.

Spending an estimated Rs 150 crore, Reliance is importing 6 million units of CDMA handsets from LG and Samsung, setting up a Rs 60 crore manufacturing unit in Pune (roll-out of handsets will begin next year). It is also training 2,500 employees for dedicated sales as part of the Dhirubhai Ambani Entrepeneurship program, informed Singh.

Interconnection has been a major issue in the CDMA-GMS tussle. As of now a Reliance subscriber in Delhi cannot connect to either of these numbers. "By the time the service is launched in Delhi, the interconnect issues will be sorted out," Singh hopes. But the Reliance’s strategy is to target atleast a crore new subscribers, to begin with. "It would be beneficial for the others to allow interconnect," Singh adds.

TRAI, in a conciliatory mode with the mobile service providers, is not allowing features like the SMS or MMS to be activated within the limited mobility loop, though the core technology supports the same. But "Why would one want to use a SMS," argues Singh, "when Reliance is offering internet chatting and exchange of video clips. E-mail is a much better bet."

Action is pacing up on the content front too, with the company tying up with the likes of Indiatimes (for messenger services), NDTV, Aajtak (for news) and several others for different segments like entertainment. There are 250 games, which can be downloaded from the portal, as well as polymorphic ring tones, informs Singh, and there is much in store. "You cannot watch a full fledged movie on the handset yet, but you can download multimedia clips using the handsets," Singh clarifies.

The Reliance WLL brand is called Reliance India Mobile. ‘Kar Lo Duniya Mutthi Mein’ is the punchline. In the first phase of the rollout, the service is targeted at tapping 104 cities, and is expected to be available in as many as 600 cities by February-March next year. It may also be noted that the company plans to enter the basic telephony space as well, in JFM-AMJ 2003, with the brand name expected to have the 'Reliance' tag.