R-Com launches GSM telephony

The Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group launched its much-awaited GSM mobile telephone services spread over 11,000 towns and 340,000 villages with a capital infusion of Rs 10,000 crore.

The Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group on Wednesday launched its much-awaited GSM mobile telephone services spread over 11,000 towns and 340,000 villages with a capital infusion of Rs 10,000 crore (Rs 100 billion/$2 billion).

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Chairman Anil Ambani, who launched the services from the Reliance Centre in Mumbai, said the rollout happened six months ahead of schedule, with the company having secured the frequency spectrum for the services only in January.

“What has taken other companies 15 years to achieve, we have completed in less than 15 months,” Ambani said, adding that the GSM telephony will complement the group's CDMA offering to give customers a wider choice.

The CDMA network of Reliance Communications spans more than 20,000 towns and 450,000 villages and has some 60 million subscribers across the country, as per the company's web site.

The launch of GSM services came just two days after the 76th birth anniversary of the company's late founder Dhirubhai H Ambani. It was on his 70th birth anniversary December 28, 2002 that Reliance had launched its mobile phone services.