Spice Telecom, the oldest cellular service provider in Karnataka, has announced a tie-up with Bangalore One, the Citizen Service e-governance initiative of the state government for payments of Spice Telecom bills across Bangalore.

Spice Telecom with the integration with Bangalore One, has taken a step forward to make it easier for its subscribers to make all bill payments.

Announcing the facility, Navin Kaul, chief operating officer, Spice Telecom, said, "The tie-up with Bangalore One is an initiative by Spice Telecom to provide customers with wider access and greater convenience in paying their bills."

Reportedly, Spice Telecom is the first private GSM operator to tie-up with Bangalore One that currently has 14 centers in Bangalore, and is planning to grow up to 50 centers in the coming year. Bangalore One - apart from providing over 20 services from 14 different government departments and private businesses like payments of Water, Electricity and Telephone bills, Property tax, Road tax, traffic challans, etc., will also render service for people to pay Spice Telecom bills at its counters.

Vipin Singh, director, Bangalore One, said, "We are happy about the tie-up, as Spice is an addition to our telecom client list which already has BSNL's landline service and Cellone, Tata Indicom and Reliance mobiles. Airtel will soon join the list as the talks are on. The Bangalore One initiative is a public-private partnership for the benefit of the citizens of Bangalore City. We face a few obstacles in dealing with private companies, as our third partner in the whole initiative is UTI Bank and they have some proceedings for making accounting easier that do not go easy with the corporate regulations of these companies. We are now working together to make all these easier and effective, and UTI has come up with very co-operative ideas to solve these issues."

"With each of these tie-up's there is a demand of a customized application as per the requirement of the particular client. CMS Computers works very closely with us to provide solutions and develop these applications. CMS Computers is a leading IT and IT solutions provider in the country, and our private partner in the Bangalore One initiative. CMS works across various verticals in strategic IT consulting, Networking, Training, Outsourcing, Platform delivery, Facility Management, Customizing and Implementing Solutions, On site service and support, and Application Management support, and thus helping us with the IT infrastructure required for this project", Singh added.

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Spice has announced the launch of four mobile phones - S-500, S-404, S-555, and S-600 - in Karnataka, after its successful launches in Rajasthan, Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana, H.P, Western and Eastern U.P, West Bengal, Assam and Tamil Nadu.

The company has introduced these entry-level phones with prices ranging from Rs 2,499 - Rs 5,799.

The compact S-500 features speaker phone, 16 chord polyphonic ringtones, white back-light, picture messaging, singtones, 200 phonebook memory and a jog-dial for easy navigation. Its dimensions are 99mm x 43 mm x 18mm, weighs 68grams, has dual band operations, The phone has talk time up to 3 hours with a 200 hour stand-by time.

The S-404 has a metallic finish, 500 phonebook memory, white backlight, Hindi language support, speaker phone and 16 chord polyphonic ringtones. Its dimensions are 105mm x 42 mm x 19mm, weighs 65 grams, has dual band operations, talk time up to 4.5 hours and a stand-by time 130 hours.

The S-555 has 65 k color display, singtones, 64 chord polyphonic ringtones, GPRS/MMS and speaker phone. Its dimensions are 99mm x 42 mm x 17.8mm, weighs 80 grams, has dual band operations, talk time of 3 hours, 180 hours stand-by time and a phonebook capacity of 300 contacts.

The dual-band S-600 is a 65000 color GPRS phone with MP3 player, 128 MB Memory, 64 chord polyphonic ringtones, speaker phone and customizable call time alert. It is 99mmx42mmx17.8 mm in dimension, weighs 70 grams, has a talk time of 3.5 hours and stand by time of 180 hours.

K Muzaffar, Head-Sales, Spice Telecom, said, "Our strength has always been our customer service and that will continue with the same. For this we have decided that there will be a service center first set up in a city before the product is launched and made available for purchase. Our service centers are called 'After Spice' and the center is already functional in Bangalore. We have identified one regional distributor per state to carry on or distribution and sales."

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Bangalore , Feb. 16

BUNDLING the mobile phone service with the handset could give a competitive edge to both Spice Telecom and Spice Ltd, its manufacturing arm.

Mr Navin Kaul, Chief Operating Officer, Spice Communications, said the company has so far not tried the strategy of bundling the handsets with the service. But said "it will give a jumpstart in sales of the handsets."

Spice Telecom's subscriber growth had stagnated last year. In the last three months, it gained sudden momentum adding 60,000 subscribers. Currently, Spice Telecom had an overall subscriber base of 3.68 lakh.

Mr Kaul said Spice was also planning to increase its post-paid subscription base to 30-35 per cent from the current 20 per cent.

The company had a majority of pre-paid customers since its launch in the State.

Earlier, addressing a press conference here in connection with the launch of its handsets, Mr Kunal Ahooja, CEO, Spice Ltd, said the company hoped to launch manufacturing of the handsets in the country by 2007.

Spice Ltd, a group company of M Corp Global headed by Mr B.K. Modi, launched the handsets under its own brand name in June last year.

The company currently sources the handsets from its Taiwan-based OEM partner Mediatek.

Mr K. Muzaffar, Head (Sales), said Spice Ltd has set up a distribution network, which would cover 2,000 outlets in 18 districts of the State.

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2006/02/17/stories/2006021703701300.htm

Spice Ltd, a group company of $250 million M Corp Global, headed by B K Modi, plans to set up a manufacturing plant for making mobile phones in India during the third quarter of this year.

It aims to make use of its existing facility at Baddi in Himachal Pradesh, where it presently assembles computers, laptops and accessories.

Said Kunal Ahuja, CEO, Spice Limited, “We are presently getting our handsets assembled in Taiwan and are in the process of working out the details of investment required for setting up our own assembly unit in India. We plan to put up the facility during the third quarter of the year.”

The plant will be operational by early 2007. Presently, the company outsources its handsets from two OEM suppliers in Taiwan - Wistron Neweb Corp and Inventec. The chipset and software are developed by a Noida-based software firm Mediatek.

Speaking to reporters after launching the mobile phones under the ‘Spice’ brand here on Thursday, he said, “As a step to widen our national reach we are now launching Spice mobiles in Karnataka with a focus on tier II and tier III cities.”

With increasing the tele-density, Spice Ltd plans to focus on building its brand nationwide and expand its reach to small and mid-sized towns in India. By March-end Spice aims to release two camera phones and another phone with built-in FM radio in May this year, Ahuja said.

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