India’s CDMA saga is over, as RCom announced the completion of the acquisition of MTS India network. It seems to be the end of an chapter of Indian telecom, as the CDMA network of MTS is to be shut down by 30th of November 2017. The lone CDMA survivor is Tata Docomo CDMA, which has been already acquired by Airtel and 800MHz will be soon vacated for LTE deployment once the deal is completed.
For MTS CDMA customers it will be very much problematic, as the text received by users from RCom, mentions clearly that they can migrate to RCOM’s 4G data network or port out to the carrier of their choice.
Recently RCom and Aircel, who had the plan to merge, opted out from the merger agreement and post that Rs. 4500 crore debt-laden RCom has gone through several drastic decisions –
- They will not renew license of DTH business (services will be stopped by November 18 and customers will be moved to Tata Sky) operated under RelianceTV (previously BigTV); Reliance TV has the lowest market share among 6 DTH companies in India (others are: Dish TV, Tata Sky, Airtel TV, Videocon d2h and Sun Direct). [Update #1: Tata Sky will offer seamless migration for RelianceTV users, who can swap the prepaid account balance to Tata Sky accounts]
