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New Delhi, Nov. 13: Real estate giant Unitech is expected to roll out its mobile services before Christmas. Unitech’s cellular foray is through Uninor, its joint venture with Norway’s Telenor.

Among those to receive licences in January 2008, Uninor is the third to commence services — Swan Telecom and Sistema Shyam have already launched operations.

The company has entered into a raft of outsourcing deals to keep a lid on its costs. Outsourcing firm Genpact will provide customer service solutions. Under a five-year contract, Genpact will support Uninor in process re-engineering, inbound and outbound customer services and training.

Uninor, which has invested Rs 2,620 crore, has tied up with Wireless-TT Info Services Pvt Ltd for towers. Wireless-TT Info is a 51:49 joint venture between Tata Teleservices and Quippo Telecom Infrastructure.

It has entered into an agreement with Wipro to manage its IT services, while contracts for network equipment in eight circles have been given to Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks.

Jon Fredrik Baksaas, chief executive of Telenor, said Uninor was on track to launch operations soon and had already set up distribution networks.

Uninor sees good potential in the country as subscriber additions remain strong. “We are convinced that mobile penetration will grow significantly over the next two to three years,” said Baksaas.

However, Uninor plans to differentiate its product on the basis of customer services and not tariffs. “We want to build the quality of customer service as our strongest differentiator,” said David Meneghello, executive vice-president (marketing) of Unitech Wireless.

The company wants to stay away from the ongoing tariff war and rely on better connectivity to build its subscriber base.

Over the last month, large operators such as Airtel, Vodafone, BSNL and Aircel responded to the increasing competition and launched per-second billing plans that charge customers on the basis of seconds of use instead of per-minute calls.

In December, Uninor plans to start services in eight circles — four in south and one each in Uttar Pradesh (east and west), Orissa and Bihar.