Hutch aims at common national pricing

Monday, 16 December 2002, 20:30 IST
Printer Print Email Email
KOLKATA: Cellular service major Hutchison is moving towards creating a uniform national tariff structure, company officials said Monday. Hutchison Telecom East Ltd. managing director Asim Ghosh told reporters here that the "cellular market was moving towards national pricing, even though the market is not ready for it. "We still take into consideration local market sentiment and set our tariffs accordingly, but this has to go," he said. The Hutchison brand 'Command', the city's leading cellular service, on Monday renamed itself Hutch. Hutch will be the company's common brand name through India. "The launch of Hutch in Kolkata is the next strategic step in our plan to create a unified national brand across all Hutchison affiliated cellular circles," Ghosh said. Though Ghosh said that "national pricing will have to wait for some time," a senior company official told IANS that the decision to go in for the common Hutch brand was a precursor to arriving at a common national pricing policy. However, the official gave no deadline for firming up a uniform pricing policy. Ghosh claimed that Hutchison enjoyed a 20 percent national market share. The company operates in seven circles. Hutch has set a target of bagging two million subscribers by end-December. "We are close to achieving our target," Ghosh said. He refused to elaborate on his company's plans of taking on the challenge of the WiLL service being provided by state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL). Reliance Infocomm is also slated to introduce the service nationally this month. Besides launching the Hutch replacing 'Command' in Kolkata, the company also introduced Hutch Share, a value-enhancing product to offer a saving of up to 50 percent for outgoing calls between two Hutch numbers. The scheme will allow a Hutch post-paid subscriber to nominate for this scheme a family member who will also get five percent free airtime of the primary user's local airtime amount.
Source: IANS