RCom to use CDMA spectrum to provide data services, GSM for voice calling
A new wave of changes, impacting millions of subscribers in the country, is coming from Reliance Communications later this year.
Reliance Communications (RCom) last week announced it would migrate its voice customers to GSM technology platform and would keep the CDMA spectrum for providing data services. The company hopes the move will help increase revenues.
“The intent is to reduce dependence of pure play CDMA voice customers. The customers who don’t use data, we will be migrating them to GSM spectrum and will free up spectrum for more and more data usage,” RCom Chief Executive Officer for Wireless Business, Gurdeep Singh told PTI.
According to the official, RCom is working to transform CDMA spectrum for high speed wireless Internet services.
“GSM and data (Internet services) put together are driving our growth. GSM and data revenue now contribute 64% to our wireless revenue, up from 57% a year ago. We want to populate that network (CDMA) with dongles and CDMA smartphones,” he added.
Singh said the company is eyeing a growth opportunity in this segment as “other CDMA players reduce their footprint or have given up spectrum. We believe we have a strong opportunity to drive dominant position in a large screen format broadband access which is through dongles route and populate more phones of CDMA on to network”.
RCom, however, will continue to provide CDMA phones. According to Gurdeep Singh, the company has partnered with Lenovo to launch CDMA phones, and is in talks with other manufacturers.
The announcement comes shortly after the telecom giant announced raising tariff by 20 percent across India, and the cutting ‘promotional and concessional offers by as much as 65%’.
Source: Business Standard