MTS India Uncertain Over Voice Services

India's only pure-play CDMA operator, Sistema Shyam TeleServices Ltd. (MTS India), is evaluating the almost unthinkable option of totally doing away with its voice services.

While most Indian operators generate just 10-12 percent of their revenues from non-voice services, that's not the case for MTS India. To totally do away with voice "is something we constantly evaluate. Right now about 33 per cent of our revenue is coming from non-voice, so it might be premature to totally do away with it. However, in three-to-five years if the data demand increases exponentially then it might make sense to do away with our voice services," Cheenu Seshadri, Chief Operating Officer-South & West Region at MTS, told Light Reading India.

Low ARPU from voice is likely to the prominent reason for the company to think of totally doing away with voice services.

MTS India, which has been investing in CDMA EV-DO Rev. B Phase II capabilities to provide the best possible data services to its customers, is still fighting to build its business in a highly competitive market. It had just 7.8 per cent market share at the end of August 2011, according to data released by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). (See MTS Revs It Up With Rev B, MTS India Boosts Its CDMA Network, MTS Faces Rough Data Ride and .)

And it doesn't have any 3G spectrum to boast about either, so now it's competing in the growing data segment with rivals that have additional data spectrum capacity. But the company isn't worried by that -- in fact, it's encouraged!

Commenting on the impact of the 3G players into the datacard segment, Seshadri notes that "nobody has got pan-India network, [and] they have just 5 MHz of spectrum. The market has in fact increased significantly with the entry of other players. Last year we had just 40,000 customers and this year we have 120,000 customers in the datacard segment."

MTS has also formed an interesting alliance with Vodafone Essar, where the latter is using MTS's network to provide dongle-based data services to its customers in some regions in the country. (See Vodafone Launches Dongles on MTS's Network.)

Gagandeep Kaur, Editor, Light Reading India