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Hutch rolls out its services in Hyderabad

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DQW Bureau
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Hutchison Essar South Ltd, the fourth cellular operator in the state of
Andhra Pradesh, has launched its Hutch branded cellular services in Hyderabad.
The services has been made available to Hutch subscribers from June 24, 2002.
With an investment of more than Rs 400 crore committed towards the AP market for
the year 2002, Hutch has set up a virgin network with 134 cell sites and is
ready to roll out its services in Vijaywada, Vizag, Rajahmundry and Guntur
within two weeks time.

“We are happy to announce that we are not only the first fourth cellular
operator in the country, but we also successfully launched our services in the
state in a record time of six months — from project conception to commercial
launch,” said Samuel Selvakumar, CEO, Hutchison Essar South.

By the end of 2002, Hutch plans to cover a total of 23 towns in AP with 191
cell sites. In the first phase of its operations the company plans to roll out
its services in five districts of AP. By the end of phase two in September 2002,
Hutch plans to cover 18 towns and six districts with additional 54 cell sites.
“We will commence phase three network roll out in January 2003 and then we
will launch our services to another 50 towns by 2003,” he added.

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The company has introduced the TalkFlexi tariff plan for post-paid users.
TalkFlexi is a sliding tariff plan, which is easy to understand since customers
will be charged based on their airtime usage in a particular month. In short, a
customer can talk more and pay less for a monthly fee rental of Rs 295.

The customers of Hutch can also benefit from the reduced SMS charges of Rs 1
per message. The company is also giving a talk late offer which provides
concessional incoming and outgoing airtime at Rs 0.50 per minute for calls from
9 pm to 8 am without any additional rental.

For its pre-paid users, Hutch has introduced its services on a 16K SIM, it
provides the user with an ease of access for information through menu driven
options. The pre-paid tariff plans include a flat rate for incoming and outgoing
calls.

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In addition to that Hutch has also introduced UMS (Unified messaging
service), a virtual mobile office that allows the customer to receive fax while
on the move, access email databases and the inter. “We are the first cellular
operator to introduce UMS in the country. We are going to charge Rs 150 per
month from our users for this facility and I hope that this kind of services
will differentiate us from the competition,” he explained.

Hutch value added services are delivered through an enhanced 32 K SIM card
(for contract subscribers) and a 32 K SIM (for pre-paid subscribers) in
partnership with Ericsson. In India, Hutchison affiliate companies now have a
pan-India operation, with cellular services in seven important telecom circles.
Orange in Mumbai, Command in Kolkota, Cellforce in Gujarat and Hutch in AP,
Karnataka, Delhi and Chennai.

Cyber News Service

(CNS)

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