Singapore, Nov 27: Singapore Telecommunications Ltd sees very strong growth in its Global System for Mobile (GSM) communications network, president and chief executive officer (CEO) Lee Hsien Yang said on Thursday.

He said SingTel, which had spent over Singapore $550 million on both GSM and personal communications network (PCN) systems, was committed to improve the systems further with another S$150 million investment.

He was speaking after unveiling a new name -- GSM1800 -- for SingTel's PCN system, its second digital network, which it introduced in December 1995.

``We expect to see very strong growth on the GSM network and certainly we anticipate that the offers we have are very attractive'' to customers, Lee said.

SingTel's PCN network, which spans over 500 base stations in Singapore, was renamed to reflect the synergies between the PCN and GSM 1800 systems, the company said.

The PCN network belongs to the same family of digital mobile systems as GSM except it operates within the 1,800 megahertz frequency spectrum while SingTel's GSM network operates on 900 megahertz. Increasingly, global mobile phone operators have adopted the GSM1800 name for PCN systems, prompting SingTel to follow suit. Lee said SingTel chose the PCN system over other digital technologies in 1995, ``basically because we saw that it complemented our GSM network. We saw that it was a growing standard with wide acceptance and knew that for many of our customers, it had many features that were crucial.''

These included the ability to roam to countries like Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom. Lee said SingTel ``clearly made the right decision'' with the European Community mandating 44 countries to issue new GSM 1800 licenses on January 1, 1998. Over the last six months, SingTel had spent over Singapore $100 million to add base stations to its PCN system, which Lee said has achieved 92 per cent coverage of Singapore. Asked about the recent rally on SingTel shares from a year low of S$1.99 In September to around S$3.00 currently, Lee attributed it to the group's strong interim earnings. For the six months ended September 30, 1997, SingTel's net profit rose 12.2 per cent to S$946.2 million while turnover rose 10 per cent to S$2.38 billion. On rumours of an impending share placement, Lee said: ``The placement is up to Temasek and OCBC Bank. The company, the timing and the amount are not known to us.''

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.