The company's managing director Asim Ghosh told The Financial Express: "We are very pleased as there are some people in the government who see the problems faced by the industry are genuine and need to be attended to." He said that improved communication was a basic need for modern economies and the "jump from basic telephony to a modern one will be good in the national interests." Major players in the industry were taking a long and strategic view to keep pace with global competition.

Ghosh said that the government, while announcing a policy, should consider that cellular projects were long-term projects where a 10-year period would be medium-term, while five and two years would be short-term. "In American terms, there should be three-way win for society, government and industry where no single section can take too much," he said.

Ghosh saidthat economic resources required to create infrastructure were inadequate and that the government should not impose a heavy tax burden on the industry merely for resource mobilisation.

He said that privatisation of the telecom industry here was a classic case of leapfrogging technology where the country has gone from a rather basic level of basic telephony to a state-of-the-art consumer offer in the last three years. "We at Hutchison Max with 100 per cent Indian human resources have been able to provide outstanding levels of cellular telephony, in many ways exceeding international standards, to Mumbai."

Hutchison Max kicked off as a joint venture between Max India and Hutchison Whampoa, Hongkong, before the Indian promoter sold off his stake recently. Switching and other related equipment were being provided by Ericsson and the network has been designed, engineered and set up by Motorola. At present, the company can accommodate 1.5 lakh subscribers.

Earlier, Air India's managing director MichaelMascarenhas inaugurated Hutchison Max telecom's state-of-the-art customer centre in south Mumbai. The centre with an area of over 1,500 sq ft will function as a one-stop assistance provider for all sales, service and payment queries. It will help customers buy handsets, decide the optimum tariff plan, sort billing queries and handle after-sales service and repair of handsets.