MUMBAI, April 9: Iridium India Telecom Ltd (IITL) has entered into an alliance with World 1 Network, a consortium of 10 cellular operators in the country, wherein the World 1 partners will offer the entire range of Iridium services in their areas. This agreement will also enable World 1 members to offer their subscribers the benefit worldwide roaming using a single phone with a single number and single billing system.According to Iridium India managing director Jaydev H Raja the objective of such an alliance was to maximise the penetration of Iridium's range of services in the wireless communications market. "As the cellular operators have already established that market in the country, it is best for us to work with them," he said.
However, Iridium India Telecom Ltd has decided not to restrict itself to the partners of World 1 consortium. In addition to the 10 cellular companies of the World 1 alliance, the company has already tied up with three more cellular operators in the country for marketing itsfull range of services and offering global roaming services to their subscribers.
According to World 1 chairman Ashwani Windlass, with this alliance, the World 1 partners will be able to provide seamless roaming services to their customers both within the country and abroad. "As the roaming services are available only in places that use the GSM technology, it has left large gaps in our roaming coverage. Now, with this alliance with Iridium, our roaming services become complete," he said.
Windlass, however, made it clear that the agreement with Iridium does not mean that the World 1 alliance will not enter into similar alliances with Iridium's competitors such as Globalstar or ICO Global. "We are absolutely open about tying up with other similar service providers. We will try to provide all types of connectivity and then it is up to the customers to choose," he said.
Iridium, which plans to start its services worldwide including India by end September, is a satellite-based digital communication systemthat aims to provide personal handheld mobile voice, data and fax communication to subscribers throughout the world by using a constellation of 66 low earth orbit satellites.
The company has already successfully launched 63 of these satellites and hopes to have the rest in place by the end of the month.
Testing of Iridium's various services are expected to begin soon. According to Raja, the inhouse and Alpha trials that will test the working between the 15 gateways and the satellites will be completed by July after which the beta testing involving the company's cellular partners and their subscribers will start.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
