Tata Teleservices Ltd plans to make a total investment of Rs 10,000 crore (Rs 100 billion) over a five-year period ending in 2007, a top executive of the company said on Monday.
M Padmanabhan, vice president (marketing), TTSL, said that the company at present was operating in the "economically advanced" states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Delhi. The customer base in these states now exceeded 750,000, he said at the inauguration of the company's services in Tiruchirappalli.
Padmanabhan claimed that the company had the unique distinction of providing the highest number (by a private operator) of village pubic telephones - linking over 3,000 villages.
R Balachandran, chief operating officer, TTSL, said that the company planned to raise its customer base in Tamil Nadu to 100,000 by November 2003 and 500,000 by 2007.
He said TTSL had already invested Rs 300 crore (Rs 3 billion) in Tamil Nadu. The total investment for the five-year period will be Rs 1,300 crore (Rs 13 billion), he said.