MTS offers calls at half-a-paise

MTS is the first mobile operator to offer half-a-paise per second tarrif on promotional basis in the State and will cover 11 districts, while claiming to provide full rural connectivity for villages with a population of 5,000 and above.

Taking advantage of its CDMA technology, MTS also launched its high-speed mobile data services — MBlaze — and said it hopes to penetrate the broadband market and become one of the leaders. MBlaze will be available in Bangalore, Mangalore, Mysore and Belgaum intitially and 16 other Indian cities by end of November.
Briefing reporters MTS Chief Operating Officer (Karnataka circle) Suresh S Kumar said “the company has identified 10,993 outlets and 153 distributors across the State to sell the product,” adding that they have also appointed 11 corporate SME partners to cater to the SME market, besides partnering with 250 outlets of modern trade stores” 

Breaking the trend in CDMA market, the firm, for the first time has provided customers with the option of purchasing up to 10 different models of phones from the open market, besides four of its own under MTS brand. Other brands on whose handsets the SIM would work include Samsung, Spice, Micromax et al. The handsets would be priced between Rs 1,500 to Rs 25,000. Further, MTS will launch a smartphone — Ivory — from manufacturers of Microsoft XBox under its brand in a few months with an exclusive feature (in the organised market) of live television on mobile phones.

Meanwhile, SSTL,  a joint venture between Russian firm Sistema (73.71 per cent) and Shyam Group (23.79 per cent) revealed that total investment for the project is US$1.4 billion and an additional investment of US$4 billion is in the pipeline for coming few years.