Sistema Shyam Teleservices (SSTL) has said higher demand for 800 MHz of CDMA band in the ongoing spectrum auction will help it further develop the ecosystem in this band of spectrum, which has largely been ignored owing to limited telecom players using this spectrum band
so far.
SSTL , which is not participating in the ongoing spectrum auction, said it is hopeful that with better ecosystem coming up for 800 MHz band will help them in trading and sharing of this spectrum. The company is now desperately waiting for the new guidelines to stay afloat in the Indian telecom sector.
SSTL, which operates in nine telecom circles on 800 MHz band of CDMA spectrum said telcos have hardly bid in the telecom circles where they operate as the spectrum in this band available in these circles is not contiguous.
“We will hardly be affected even if there is higher activity in the auction for 800 MHz band. Instead, the more better the ecosystem we have for 800 MHz, the more we would be comfortable,” said an SSTL official.
Besides SSTL, Reliance Communications (RCom) and Tata Teleservices (TTSL), operate using CDMA technology and share less than 24% market in India’s telecom sector, while 76% is run using GSM technology.
Currently, SSTL operates in nine circles namely Delhi, Kolkata, Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh (West), West Bengal, Rajasthan of the total 22 telecom circles in the country.
Meanwhile, SSTL’s CEO Dmitry Shukov Shukov sharing details of the financial result for October-December quarter of 2014 said its non-voice revenues grew by 11.5 % during the quarter, contributing 47% of the total revenues, the highest in the industry.
“One of the key reasons for improvement in our data revenues was due to expansion of our HSD (high speed data) services across all our 9 circles,” he added.
