NEW DELHI, India-Motorola Inc. has formed a joint venture in India with Punjab Wireless Ltd. to offer mobile trunking service in 15 cities.
Motorola will have an equity base of 49 percent, and Punwire will own 51 percent. The venture, called ProCall Private Ltd., has been tentatively licensed to provide two-way public mobile radio trunking, but final government approval is pending.
Trunked radio will be a new service in India, although trunking is widely used in other areas worldwide, the venture said. ProCall will offer service in Delhi, Gurgaon, Ghaziabad, Faridabad, Panipat, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Lucknow, Kanpur, Jammu, Amritsar, Jallandhar, Ludhiana, Allahabad and Varanasi.
“We would like to position ProCall as India’s professional mobile hotline,” said Punwire Chairman Gurpal Singh, “And we expect to have a subscriber base of 45,000 in 15 cities within a period of five years.”
ProCall hopes to impact market segments such as delivery services, hotels, hospitals, airlines, news services, stockbrokers and security services.
The service will allow simultaneous communications between members of a group, sub-group or on a one-to-one basis with a push-to-talk handset. There will be no need to dial numbers, leave messages or wait for a return call.
Punwire supplies wireless communications equipment to India’s military, police, Department of Telecommunication and the commercial sector.
