NTT Docomo Enters India

NTT Docomo Enters India

Kunal Gangar, Nov 13, 2008 1533 hrs IST

Alliance with Tata Tele set to bolster Indian mobile space

Here is another reason that India's telecom market is thriving. NTT Docomo has announced their strategic alliance with Tata Teleservices (TTSL). Under this agreement, NTT Docomo has agreed to acquire 26% of TTSL shares which are valued at Rs. 13,070 crore or USD 2.7 billion.

They were reportedly in talks for months and the announcement is a confirmation of that. In addition to this, NTT Docomo in accordance of SEBI guidelines, will also make an open offer to acquire up to 20% of outstanding equity shares of Tata Teleservices Maharashtra Limited (TTML).

Tata has around 30 million subscribers and the new partnership means the companies will try to expand mobile communication operations to expand customer base as well achieve steady business growth.

NTT Docomo will work behind the scenes to give TTSL a steady infrastructure for non-voice services. One of them being the 3G expertise. NTT Docomo will take care of the bandwidth with Tata. Another backdoor avenue to open up for them will be the mobile software market. They will be able to sell their i-mode applications in India under the TTSL brand.

Couple of notable i-mode apps are Imadoco and Osaifu-Keitai. Imadoco is a GPS-based facility that allows a user to transmit as well as know his family, friends location on the go. Osaifu-Keitai on the other hand, is an m-commerce application just like mChek or NGPay.