Reliance Infocomm Chairman Mukesh Ambani gave an example of the sort of competition he would offer telecom operators in India prior to the soft launch of its limited mobile services on Saturday.

Ambani threw a major challenge to cellular telephone service operators by saying the company planned to add one million subscribers every month. To put that into perspective, after seven years of operations, India has 9.7 million cellular service subscribers.

"We have asked our multiple handset operators to be prepared to provide anything between 1 million and 8 million handsets by March," Ambani said.

Ambani was fielding media questions before the inaugural by Communications Minister Pramod Mahajan of Reliance Infocomm's network operations centre at the Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge City in Navi Mumbai on Friday. Reliance Industries vice-chairman Anil Ambani was not present on the occasion.

Reliance officials said he was in New Delhi because of important Cabinet meetings there.

Mukesh Ambani said Reliance was hopeful of gaining a 25 per cent market share by the end of 2004. The company would activate limited mobile services in as many as 672 cities in two stages, which could enable it to achieve the market share target even faster.

In a move that could be a body blow to cellular operators, Ambani said Reliance would also offer text messaging on the CDMA platform -- akin to the short messaging service in GSM -- free.

"Our basic licence allows us to offer text messaging," Ambani said.  The company received a shot in arm on Friday with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India finally approving its tariff plan with minor changes. Calls will cost 10 paise for a 15-second pulse. Trai has asked Reliance to halve free airtime to 400 minutes. Incoming calls remain free.

Ambani said bookings for the limited mobile offering would open in January and close by March, while commercial operations would begin only in April. Apart from voice and data connection, services would include free text messaging and Internet access. The handsets could even be used as modems.

Even handsets for the base-level scheme -- called the Dhirubhai Ambani Pioneer scheme -- will be free. In a stunning statement, Ambani said base-level subscribers would get free gift vouchers worth Rs 100,000.

The base-level offer, where the service will be offered for just a Rs 3,000 down payment, will be available only till March 31, after which rates could go either up or down, depending on competitive pressure, Ambani said. He did not reveal details about the top-end schemes.