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Page Me to expand services

Page Me, part of the Rs 1.5 billion Punwire Group, plans to expand its reach throughout the country, covering 460 cities and 500,000 subscribers by 1999, up from the present 100 cities and 150,000 subscribers.

Page Me currently provides paging services in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, covering 65 per cent of India's land area and a 515 million target population. All this at a time

T O D A Y

• MS in Hyderabad • HCL's PII upgrade offer • Page Me expansion • VSNL-Global One pact

that the rest of the paging industry is struggling.

According to Ved Prakash, the company's chief operating officer, the expansion plan is centred around the success of its new regional language paging -- in Hindi, Marathi and Gujarati. The service is also available in Tamil and Malayalam.

The wide network and the "roaming facility" that lets people reach Page Me customers who leave their city of residence and go to any of the 100 cities the company now covers and 15 other towns where it has partnerships going with local paging services. The company is reportedly also increasing its "controlling centres" to improve quality of coverage. The company's already connected larger cities with nearby satellite towns using transmitters.

And, like most other services, it has value additions in the form of regular news bulletins, sports news, stock market reports and community service information. Now it's awaiting clearance before offering nationwide roaming via VSAT.

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