Abhijit Pal in Calcutta on Friday. A Telegraph picture

Calcutta, June 29: Tata Indicom plans to invest Rs 436 crore in the eastern region this fiscal. The region has Calcutta, Bengal, Orissa, Bihar and Jharkhand circles.

“We aim to raise our subscriber base in the region to 41 lakh from 23.1 lakh by March 2008. Calcutta is likely to have 14 lakh subscribers by the end of this fiscal against 9.4 lakh now. We plan to invest Rs 207 crore in Bengal and Rs 125 crore in the city,” said Abhijit Pal, chief operating officer, Calcutta circle, Tata Teleservices Ltd.

The cumulative investment in Bengal till March 31, 2008 will be Rs 928 crore. It will be Rs 1,700 crore for the eastern region.

Last fiscal, the company added four lakh subscribers in the city and 6.5 lakh in the state.

The company’s market share on March 31, 2007 was 13 per cent in the city and 10 per cent in the state.

“We will expand our operations to cover the entire state by the end of this fiscal,” Pal said.

Tata Indicom plans to add five retail stores in the city, 25 in Bengal and 101 in the eastern region this fiscal.

Pal said the company would try to improve the quality of its CDMA service. CDMA is the preferred telecom technology all over the world, he added.