India's Reliance Communication Launches GSM Services Nationwide

Reliance Communications, part of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani group, on Tuesday announced the launch of GSM-based cellular services in 14 circles. The company has completed the GSM network roll out six months ahead of schedule by investing Rs.10,000 crores so far. This nationwide GSM rollout will include over 11,000 towns. "We will be doubling our GSM coverage from 11,000 towns and 3 lakh villages to 24,000 towns and six lakh villages over the next few months.", Mr. Anil Ambani Said.

RCom's (Reliance Communication) GSM Network is the first nationwide ‘enhanced’ EDGE network, a technology that would offer the fastest Internet access speeds available to Indians. Additionally, through their global partnership on both GSM and CDMA, their customers will be able to roam internationally to more than 200 countries on more networks at attractive rates.

RCom's nationwide GSM rollout has been a very large project, wherein Reliance has once again proven its execution skills. They received the GSM spectrum only in January this year, which is less than 11 months ago. Since then their network rollout has been completed and more than 11,000 towns and 340,000 villages will be part of their GSM offerings to begin with.

In summary, their number one CDMA network will now be supported by India’s world class GSM network. With this, Indians will have the unique proposition of being able to choose between two nationwide world class networks and have access to the largest handset range available of any operator in India, of over 300 different handsets.

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 Dec 28, 2002 that Reliance had launched its mobile phone services.