Virgin Mobile extended its partnership with Tata Teleservices (TTSL) to launch VAS including voice services. To start with the launch has been restricted to cover the Southern part of India including Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Chennai, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

The pan-India GSM rollout will be completed within this fiscal.

The voice calls are priced at 20 paise per minute for local and STD calls made to Virgin Mobile numbers and 40 paise per minute for local calls and 50 paise per minute for STD calls made to other networks.

M. A. Madhusudan, Chief Executive Officer, Virgin Mobile India, said, “All operators' bottomlines are under huge pressure, with revenues remaining stagnant although subscriber base has gone up. We have to be lean and mean. But the GSM market is a large market with opportunities...the canvas is wide. Around 1.5 crore subscribers are being added every month, and 50 per cent are youth. The larger game is in gaining the consumer's wallet share and ensuring that we are the preferred brand for outgoing calls. The key DNA of our service is ‘Doston ka network' - to deliver products and services that help one get the most out of friends circles.”

Addressing the media at the launch event, Mr Anil Sardana, Managing Director, Tata Teleservices, said, “Our GSM foray (with DoCoMo) recently has been well received in the country prompting us to launch GSM with Virgin as well. We have invested in additional networks to reinforce our GSM network.”

In a message to the media, Sir Richard Branson, Chairman and Founder of the Virgin Group, said: “India is the only market in the world where Virgin is present in both the GSM and CDMA platforms.