Mumbai, Sept. 29: Reliance Communications (R-Com) has begun the soft launch of its GSM network across major cities, including Mumbai, Delhi, Gujarat, Punjab and some southern states.

The company has invested Rs 800 crore each in Mumbai and Delhi to set up 2,500 towers. It has invested another Rs 1,750 crore to set up 700 towers in Ahmedabad, 1,000 in Bangalore, 1,500 in Chennai, 1,250 in Hyderabad, 1,000 in Pune and 400 in Ludhiana.

The launch is slated to take place in eight to 10 weeks after the soft launch. R-Com is the first major CDMA player to begin GSM operations.

Company officials said the Mumbai and Delhi circles went live on Sunday afternoon with close to 10,000 SIM cards issued to its employees for trial.

In the next stage, the company will bring in associates and vendors on the network for further tests.

To reduce call drops and ease congestion, the company has set up “in-building solutions” in over 500 buildings in Mumbai. Another 1,000 in-building solutions will be added over the course of the next six months based on the network load, officials said.

R-Com’s first phase of testing has begun in cities which comprise 45 per cent of the telecom subscriber base in the country, sources said.

Spectrum allocation

The government is likely to allocate start-up GSM spectrum in the Maharashtra circle to new licensees, including Swan, Datacom and Loop Telecom, in the next two days.

Bharti Airtel is also likely to get additional spectrum in the Maharashtra circle. At present, it has 6.2 megahertz (Mhz) of spectrum. Another licensee — Shyam Telelink — has got 2.5 Mhz of CDMA spectrum for the circle.