Hutchison Telecom East CEO Sridhar Rao in Calcutta on Friday. Picture by Kishor Roy Chowdhury

Calcutta, May 5: Hutchison Telecom East Ltd plans to invest Rs 500 crore in the Calcutta and Bengal circles this year. It will also double the network capacity in the city and cover 300 more towns (population of over 3,000) in the state.

The company has earmarked around Rs 300 crore for the Bengal circle and Rs 200 crore for Calcutta.

“We already have a million subscribers in the city and half-a-million in the state. The investments are in line with our aim to improve the city network and penetrate more markets,” said Sridhar Rao, chief executive officer of Hutchison Telecom East Limited.

The company already covers 500 towns in the state.

“We have partnered with Nokia to manage the network in the state. However, we handle it ourselves in Calcutta,” Rao said.

Hutch is also likely to start operations in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the next three to four months. “We are currently doing the groundwork,” said Rao.

Around 30,000 to 40,000 Hutch users are added every month in Calcutta and 50,000 in Bengal. Hutch has 660 cell sites in the city and over 550 in the Bengal circle.

Hutch has also introduced the concept of automated kiosks, which are similar to an ATM where customers can pay their bills of up to Rs 7,000 in cash, view their bill details, buy prepaid recharge coupons and activate roaming services.

The company plans to have 100 such kiosks, 50 each in Calcutta and Bengal during the year. Hutch will invest around Rs 4 to 5 crore for the expansion.

Such kiosks are already a huge success in New Delhi, where they have been set up at metro stations too.

“In the first phase, we would open kiosks near Hutch shops, high traffic areas and malls. In the second phase, we will consider the metro or railway stations,” Rao said.

Initially, there would be five kiosks in Calcutta.