Reliance to offer post to pre-paid migration

BANGALORE: The option of migrating from the existing post-paid service to the newly launched pre-paid service of Reliance Infocomm would be announced later this month, according to Viney Singh, Chief Executive Officer, Wireless-Karnataka Circle. "We have deliberated the existing post-paid subscriber choice to move to a pre-paid service at length. The migration option has been planned and proposed and will be announced later this month." The option was non-existent for the 6 million post-paid mobile users of Reliance Infocomm when the pre-paid service was reported in the media late last month.

The telecom arm of the country’s largest business conglomerate launched its CDMA fixed and mobile service last year at dirt cheap call rates. This has spurred the growth in nation’s mobile sector, which has leapt from 11 million users in 2002 to 28.19 million by December 2003. Reliance Infocomm enjoys a market share of about 20 per cent, currently shared by GSM service provider, Bharti, who also enjoys the same 20 per cent.

"We would like to more than double our existing number of subscribers and don’t wish to enjoy just a market leadership position, instead want to own the entire market ourselves," added Singh, while informing Reliance Infocomm’s practice of not fixing any numbers as targets.

The pre-paid service from Reliance Infocomm can be availed by paying an upfront amount of Rs3,500. For this you get a Motorola C131 handset with rechargeable vouchers worth Rs3,240, valid for about one year. After this period, rechargeable vouchers of denominations Rs324 with a talk time of Rs200, Rs540 with talk time value of Rs375 and Rs1,080 with talk time worth Rs850 would be available. The validity of these are 30, 60 and 90 days respectively.

The $16.8 billion (revenues recorded for last fiscal) Reliance Group has invested over Rs 1,200 crore in setting up its telecom infrastructure in the country. Out of this Rs500 crore has been invested in the Karnataka circle, where it has a subscriber base of 4.38 lakh subscribers for its mobile service.

CIOL Bureau