Idea Cellular, one of the major telecom companies in India led by the Aditya Birla group have announced that they have begun their operations on Mumbai. The company so far has heavy presence in the Northern and Southen parts of the country.

With this announcement, IDEA now becomes the 5th GSM provider in Mumbai, competing directly with Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, BPL and the state-owned MTNL. The city is the fastest growing telecom circle in the country, adding over 3.5 lakh customers every month.

Speaking to Business Standard, Mr. Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chairman of the Aditya Birla Group, said:

Mumbai is the commercial capital of the country and merits world-class mobile services. The Mumbai launch will bolster our position as a leading telecom player in the country,

The company plans to invest Rs. 800 crore in its Mumbai Operations, of which Rs. 600 crore has been spent for the telecom services’ license itself. The remaining Rs. 200 crore will be spent on building the infrastructure required for its operations in the city. As per a report, the company plans to have an initial network of over 1000 cell sites spread across the city. Services will be offered and operated on the 1800 Mhz frequency on a pooled core switching core network with 2.75G capabilities. The company will also have over 60 ‘My Idea’ exclusive service centres and 15,000 retail outlets around the city. According to Mr. Birla, the company expects to break-even within 4 years of Mumbai operations.

This launch gives the advantage that the company has been long looking for. The company has a strong presence in many states with over 28 million customers spread across 11 circles. After Mumbai, Idea now covers over 70 percent of the country’s subscribers. Having acquired Spice Mobile a while back, the company aims to raise the figure from 70 percent to 90 percent. However, with the Department of Telecom (DoT) eyeing the deal, it’s not going to be a smooth ride for the operator. Additional spectrum has been allotted to Idea in states like Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa and Tamil Nadu and it plans to begin operations before April next year.

Idea has pinned high hopes from the Mumbai circle and will try to attract 20 percent of the new subscribers. For that, the company has planned a long line-up of value added services to its new subscribers, including high-speed internet, dialer tones in 19 languages, a huge collection of one lakh songs in 21 different languages. The company also has a portal with a wide collection of wallpapers and games.

However, Idea’s launch in Mumbai has set dark clouds for the existing GSM subscribers and 3G in the city. With the DoT announcing the guidelines for 3G auction, it was realized that there was only enough spectrum available for one additional operator for Mumbai, other than MTNL. This now means that Airtel, Vodafone, BPL and Idea will now go full force to the spectrum auction.

Knowing that only one operator would initially be allotted spectrum for 3G services, irrespective of the rentals of plans, would you be willing to change your service provider, now that Mobile Number Portability is going to be implemented?

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