Tata teams with Jap giant DOCOMO to launch GSM services in India

Japanese telecom leader DOCOMO,  footprint extends across India -- thanks to its partnership with Tata Teleservices  to   bring GSM mobile services   to the country. After  Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Orissa, Karnataka became the fourth state  where Tata-DOCOMO will offer services  at an aggressively priced tariff of just one paise per second --  for local and national long distance -- with interntional calls also billed in 1-second pulses.

Tata promises  to leverage many of DOCOMO's   technologies like  mobile payments, location sensitive services and its proprietary packet service: i-mode. "We aim to cut through the clutter", said  TaTA-DOCOMO President Deepak Gulati, " and  redefine the pricing paradigm."

The Karnataka  service will cover  427 towns and  2642 villages along  505 kms of state highways, Tata spokespersons said at  Thursday's launch.

It takes 50 of those paisas to roughly equal one US cent -- so the move  makes Indian mobile services by far the cheapest in the world.

(Bangalore, July 9)