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BSNL Announced Plans To Offer CDMA Mobile Services In Class A Cities, Starting With Kolkata

By Mrs Gupta, Section Telephone
Posted on Wed Oct 03, 2007 at 02:21:43 AM EST

At a time when the country's mobile giants are pressing ahead with GSM expansion plans, the state owned BSNL is betting big on the other technology, the CDMA. The national telecom behemoth has now announced plans to offer CDMA mobile services in Class A cities, starting with Kolkata. BSNL will now take on private CDMA biggies like Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices.

Before its recently announced Rs 900 crore national CDMA infrastructure expansion initiative, BSNL has been largely offering CDMA mobile services in rural markets. "We have now decided to offer CDMA services in Class A cities and the service will first be launched in Kolkata," BSNL Kolkata's Chief General Manager SK Chakravarty told reporters in Kolkata on Monday.

"The mobile service is likely to be bundled with a CDMA fixed wireless terminal for home use and a data service including high speed internet. The pricing is being worked out. The service will be rolled out by December," he said.

BSNL's national CDMA infrastructure expansion will be undertaken in two phases. The first entails an investment of Rs 300 crore and is slated to be completed by December 2007. Following its completion, the company will start offering bundled services in the cities. In the second phase, BSNL will invest Rs 600 crore.

BSNL Kolkata has also decided to launch EVDO (Evolution Data optimised) in Kolkata once the CDMA infrastructure is in place. EVDO is a high speed broadband connection for CDMA users in the 3G standard. "The infrastructure for CDMA being installed is CDMA 2001X and we will also receive some EVDO equipment along with it. This will enable us to roll out the broadband service on CDMA handsets in Kolkata," said a BSNL official.

BSNL Kolkata has also entered into talks with four television channels for offering video streaming services to its GSM subscribers. The channels are NDTV, ETV, Aaj Tak and India TV. The service will be available in the next couple of weeks. It has also launched a high speed wireless internet service for its GSM subscribers. This will allow the subscribers to access the internet through a Bluetooth dongle attached to a laptop. It will be charged 1 paise per kilobyte.

Meanwhile, BSNL Kolkata has launched two services Tricon and Universal Personal Number (UPN). Under Tricon, the company will bundle landline, cellular connections and internet service at rates that will allow 30% overall savings on the current tariff. The UPN will offer a universal number which will allow subscribers to receive or make calls from any BSNL landline or cellphone at reduced rates.

Source:Economic Times,03-10-07

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