Tata Teleservices Limited (TTSL), India’s fastest-growing pan India telecom service provider, today announced the signing of a landmark ‘Master Services Agreement for Passive Infrastructure Sharing’ with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL).

Becoming the first Indian private telecom operator to enter into an agreement of this nature. The agreement which is valid for 15 years will be applicable to both Tata Teleservices Limited and Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) Limited in all of India’s 22 telecom Circles.

“This is a moment of pride for us, as we have become the first private telecom operator to enter into such a strategically important agreement with BSNL, one that will allow us to expand our telecom footprint across the country much more quickly,” Mr Madhav Joshi, President, Legal and Regulatory Affairs, Tata Teleservices Limited, said.

The agreement comes at a very strategic time for Tata Teleservices Limited (TTSL) and Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) Limited (TTML), as both companies have been aggressively expanding their network presence on the CDMA side with Tata Indicom, while also rolling out GSM services under the TATA DOCOMO brand name. “In the short space of just three months, we have already rolled out our GSM services in nine Circles—Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Orissa, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Mumbai, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh-Chhattisgarh and Haryana,” Mr AG Rao, Chief Technology Officer, Tata Teleservices Limited, said. “This agreement has the potential to not just speed up our network expansion and rollout process, but would also have a substantial impact in terms of reduced costs,” he added.

Under the terms of the agreement, TTSL and TTML will have access to thousands of BSNL towers all across the country.

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Kcell informs that with the installation of 3500 base stations the Company provided a decent cellular communication service in all villages with a population of more than 5000 people and in 85% of villages with a population of more than 2000 people. At the moment Kcell has the largest coverage area of its network including almost 2000 cities and villages all over the country.

Veysel Aral, the Chief Executive Officer of GSM Kazakhstan/Kcell, says: “This is an important milestone in the technical development of our Company which proves a continuous implementation of tasks assigned to all cellular operators by the RK government – to provide the Kazakhstani rural area with communication. Our Company has invested over one billion US dollars into high technologies and country infrastructure thus bringing communication to most remote villages and both republican and regional roads within the country. Our investments are not only the largest coverage area. This is communication quality, which satisfies the very high international benchmarks, regarding to traffic transmission channel availability, overload or network fall – exceed the world standards. We are happy to make our own contribution into the telecommunication infrastructure development and to continue supporting the economical growth of Kazakhstan in the future. ”

The Company deals with the world leading manufacturers of cellular communication equipment such as Ericsson and Nokia, which allows provision of the most reliable and high quality communication within almost 80% of the country residency area.

70% of the installed base stations support the high speed data transfer technology EDGE, which is now available in 18 cities of Kazakhstan, including all oblast centers of the country. Currently the Company is completely ready for implementation of 3G cellular standard.

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Kcell, the Kazakhastani mobile operator has slashed the price for its start up package to KZT 1500, including KZT 1300 credit on the subscriber’s account. The reduced price are applicable to all the tariff plans of Kcell, except for Business tariff plans.
The cost of the Business start-up package is KZT 12,200, including KZT 12,000 credit.

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Geocell, the Georgian incumbent has slashed the prices for its roaming services by 30%. Geocell has dropped the prices for the calls made to the Azercell network in Azerbaijan, Moldcell in Moldova, K’Cell network in Kazakhstan, Ucell in Uzbekistan and Indigo in Tajikistan.
The Lai-Lai prepaid subscribers visiting these countries can make calls at a price of GEL 2.05 per minute for outgoing calls to Georgia and Gel 1.5 for incoming calls. The subscribers can send SMS at a cost of GEL 0.60/SMS.