Hughes Tele.com, the basic telephony service provider in the Maharashtra and Goa circles, has registered a turnover of Rs 139.23 crore, a growth of 118 percent as compared with Rs 67 crore in 1999-00.

The company’s customer lines have increased by 204 percent to 69,599 lines at the end of March 2001 from 22,913 lines at the end of the previous year. The company has invested around Rs 600 crore in capital assets, and for the current fiscal plans to invest around Rs 400 crore.

Hughes is the first broadband network based basic telephony service provider. It is rapidly building out its broadband fiber optic and microwave networks. The company has increased its telecommunication services coverage to eight cities in Maharashtra and Goa—Mumbai, Navi Mumbai etc. Hughes currently has a total of twenty-one operational cell sites deployed in Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and Pune. These sites, in turn, are connected to NEC switches located in Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and Pune, using microwave technology.

During the last fiscal, Hughes has launched a broadband wireless service in Mumbai for last mile connectivity with equipment sourced from Hughes Network Systems. The company is also planning to launch CDMA services as a significant amount of the infrastructure required for limited mobility service including network, switches, cell sites, spectrum, etc, are already in place.