TTSL’s exit from auction stems from its lowest market share – 131,044 users in Assam, 79,068 in North East and 109,105 in J&K

Telecom Lead India: Tata Teleservices (Tata Docomo) has the lowest market share in North-East, Assam and Jammu & Kashmir circles comparing with Airtel, Aircel, Vodafone, Reliance Communications and Idea Cellular.

Tata Teleservices has 131044 users in Assam; 79068 in North East and 109105 in Jammu & Kashmir as on June 2012. This means Tata Teleservices’ income from these circles is comparatively lower than any other telecom circles. All operators want to be in top 3 positions in both revenue share and subscriber market share.

Competing with incumbents for additional market share does not make sense (business) for Tata Teleservices. On top of this, there is an additional burden of huge spectrum fee.

Tata Teleservices’ wireless market share in India is around 8.59 percent against Airtel’s 20.05 percent and Reliance Communications’ 16.55 percent.

Recently, TelecomLead.com reported that Uninor has decided to scale down operations in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and Orissa telecom circles. The decision to bring down the business is due to the
ongoing regulatory uncertainties.

Uninor will give more focus on Mumbai, Maharashtra & Goa, UP East, UP West, Bihar and Jharkhand, Kolkata, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat.

Even for Uninor, which wants to gain market share, North-East, Assam and Jammu & Kashmir circles are not focus areas.

For Tata Teleservices, there are more reasons for withdrawing its application to bid for mobile airwaves used for CDMA-based services.

These are loss-making circles and there is no business case. Besides, the company is banking on its curative petition in the Supreme Court against its licence cancellation in these three circles.

Videocon Telecommunications, the other participant in CDMA spectrum auctions had also withdrawn its application on Friday.

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