The Anil Dhirubhai Ambani-owned company also maintains its $1.4 billion capital expenditure for FY07 (including $900 million for wireless operations), a part of which will also be used for its GSM rollout.
"The strategy is to offer technology-neutral services to subscribers, and we do not intend to change our CDMA strategy.
However, we are aiming for a full-blown national GSM network (expanding to Mumbai, Delhi and other circles) that will be operated by the company's subsidiary Reliance Telecom," a company source said.
The funding for the project will be done from the $1.4 billion capex, and Reliance Communications expects the GSM rollout to cost around one-third of a greenfield rollout.
It makes good business sense to operate an alternative network, in addition to its CDMA network. The proposed GSM network will help the company in capturing a large chunk of incremental subscribers, leveraging its existing passive CDMA infrastructure.
Moreover, with CDMA spectrum being limited, the company can meet the growing number of subscribers on the proposed GSM network.
It also expects the GSM exposure to result in an increased corporate user base, apart from GSM roaming traffic from international visitors. On the strategy to migrate to 3G/WCDMA, nothing has been firmed up.
"It is too early to comment on the 3G strategy and migration from GSM/CDMA to EVDO/WCDMA. We will take a decision only after the announcement of the 3G spectrum policy by the regulator," he said.
For the allocation of spectrum, the company is in discussions with the DoT and expects to be allocated 4.5 MHz under 1,800 MHz frequency.
© 2025