Mumbai, June 28: Tata Indicom will soon be offering telephony services in three new circles.

“We have made an application for Jammu & Kashmir, the Northeast and Assam. We will soon be in these circles,” Darryl Green, CEO of Tata Teleservices Ltd (TTSL) said here today. He however refused to give any other details.

“I cannot, at this point, tell you the number of subscribers we are looking at and the exact date of starting operations there, but we are in the application procedure stage,” he added. TTSL is already present in 20 circles in the country and operates in more than 2,500 towns. The addition of three circles will help them expand their subscriber base, which is at 10 million now.

Refusing to comment on any differences with Qualcomm regarding the royalty issue, Green said, “We had a meeting with Qualcomm’s chief last night and they could be looking at more investments in India. We are trying to leverage their technology to bring the best to Indian subscribers. Royalty is almost the same in India and China. Qualcomm will continue to support us.”

The royalty issue has been the bone of contention between the CDMA players in the country and Qualcomm.

San Diego, California-based Qualcomm makes money on royalties from companies that sell phones based on CDMA technology, and it also sells chips that power CDMA phones. The company has been facing opposition from CDMA operators over what they say are high royalty charges. It is also believed that Qualcomm charges close to 7 per cent as royalty from in India on CDMA handsets, while the same for China is 2 per cent.