RCom has soft launched it’s GSM service and has provided GSM phones to it’s employees for testing the service.

Mumbai, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Surat, Lucknow and Ludhiana circles went live on Sunday afternoon with close to 10,000 test SIM cards being issued to its employees.

In the next stage of launch the company will get associates and vendors on the network for further testing.
By the time of the launch, close to 5 lakh test subscribers are likely to be on the company’s GSM network – source

More details:

• Around 1 lakh temporary staff is working on the company’s GSM project.
• 8,000 skilled manpower from RCom and vendors are supervising the operations
• RCom is aiming to achieve a market share of 25 per cent on launch of its nationwide dual network.

Telco Market (as of August 2008)

• The total wireless subscriber base, which includes GSM, CDMA and WLL(F), stood at 305.24 million at the end of August 2008.
• The total number of telephone connections reaches 343.87 m
• The overall tele-density has reached 29.83 per cent at the end of August 2008,
• Total Broadband subscribers base has reached 4.73 million

More new players are joining this market and expect consolidation in a year or so.

Additional spectrum for Maharashtra

Bharti Airtel is likely to get additional spectrum in Maharashtra, along with new telecom licensees such as Unitech, Swan and Datacom – source

Tags: Indian Telecom Industry