Hutch rolls out its services in Hyderabad

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.

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.

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)