Reliance Communications Plans Major Expansion In Rural Tamil Nadu

[Arun 795]

25 August, 2008, 16:52 IST

Economic Times

Mobile telephony major Reliance Communications (RCom) plans to expand in rural areas in Tamil Nadu in a major way, a top official said here Monday.

"We intend to expand our distribution reach to 13,500 villages out of the 15,000 in the state," Ajay Awasthi, RCom chief executive for the Tamil Nadu circle told IANS on the sidelines of a media meet.

He said villages with a population of around 5,000 are being targeted, and RCom hopes to make about 10 sales every month in each village.

The company will start appointing around 100 distributors to reach at least 4,000 rural outlets.

"It could be any kind of an outlet. It could be a tailor shop, a grocery or a fertiliser and seed seller. The outlets will sell not only our mobile connections but also other products such as handsets, fixed wireless phones and even data cards," Awasthi said.

RCom is also looking at the possibility of setting up Internet cafés in villages.

The rural thrust is aimed at monetising the company's network spread across the state. "We have now around 2,650 cell sites in Tamil Nadu," he said.

In Tamil Nadu, it has a little over four million subscribers, 92 percent of which are prepaid connections. The average revenue per user is Rs.230, Awasthi said.

The company hopes to increase this with its new scheme for small and medium enterprise(SME) segment. under this scheme, calls to other Reliance phones will be free.

The average spend on mobile telephony by SMEs with around five employees is around Rs.700 per month per person.

While he declined to reveal the target for new subscriber enrolment under the new scheme, Awasthi ruled out migration to the latest scheme by existing subscribers.

[Arun 795]

Reliance Comm launches business prepaid scheme in Tamil Nadu

The Financial Express

Tuesday , August 26, 2008 at 01:40 hrs

Reliance Communications on Monday launched a new business prepaid scheme, named, 'Business Jaadu 135 pack', that will benefit over five laklh small enterprises in Tamil Nadu.

It would enable the prepaid customers, like the high-value post-paid subscribers, to make unlimited group calling (closed user group) to their partners, employees and business associates in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry at Rs135 a month. They can speak unlimited time to all Reliance mobiles and make calls at the rate of 49 p/ min to other mobiles and to landlines in Tamil Nadu, Ajay Awasthi, CEO, Tamil Nadu Circle, Reliance Communications Ltd, said.

A large part of the business calling daily would be among the four or five associates of the business.The normal cost for each of their mobile would work out to Rs 400 a month. With the new package, they can save about one third of their monthly phone bills. They would not have to pay for their intra-office calls.This would save more than one-third of their monthly mobile spends, he said.

The small businesses could also enjoy an additional saving of more than 15% on their spends with the top-ups available in denominations of Rs 77, Rs 120, Rs 210, Rs 301, Rs 501, Rs 777, Rs 110, he added.

A wide range of LG colour handsets are also avaialble at a starting price of Rs 999, he said.

Awasthi said, ''the business prepaid product will result in cost saving of up to 35% helping the small enterprises save on costs during inflationary times as the intra-group calling is as high as 65%."