abhay 0 Report post Posted October 4, 2005 Hutchison Essar’s total investment in West Bengal (excluding Kolkata circle) is poised to exceed Rs 400 crore. The company has lined up plans to roll out an additional 520-odd base stations (BTSs) to provide coverage across nearly 800 state towns by end-’06.At present, Hutch-Essar operates cellular services in 225 state towns. Hutch-Essar has a long-term vendor agreement with Nokia for sourcing the BTSs and switches for its West Bengal expansion. Its plans to make big strides in the state mobile turf comes in the backdrop of market leader BSNL’s plans to pump in Rs 650 crore over the next six months. BSNL plans to add 7 lakh subscribers in the state during this period. Till date, Hutch-Essar has invested over Rs 150 crore in the state network rollout. As cellular infrastructure costs have plunged worldwide, investment in over 500 new BTSs is likely to cost Rs 260 crore, assuming that the average cost of a GSM base station would be Rs 50 lakh, sources said. Gone are the days when the average price of a BTS was Rs 1 crore during the first flush of cellular rollouts in the late 90s. Though a late entrant in the West Bengal, Hutchison Essar has raced to second spot with a 20% share behind BSNL-CellOne which dominates the state with a 30% share. While Hutch has 2.35 lakh subscribers, BSNL has 3.77 lakh CellOne users. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1251079.cms Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Utsav 0 Report post Posted October 9, 2005 In Kolkata, only Hutch customers are fully satisfied with their Network within the city. Seems that Hustch is preparing to encash their depandability in the whole state. My best wishes. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
