Tesco, a Fortune 500 company, has charted out an aggressive expansion plan for its telecom division in order to establish itself as the undisputed leader of all possible retail formats. Its plan entails opening up of another 59 mobile kiosks inside their existing stores from the current count of 41.

Since its inception way back in 1919, diversification has been the key to Tesco’s success story, and from being a grocery chain, the company has forayed into garments, FMCG products, health, insurance, internet services, software, telecom etc. By flexing its muscle in the wireless communication domain, the company aims to earn a whopping profit of one billion pounds annually from its non-food businesses.

The company’s plans have triggered speculation on whether Tesco could threaten Carphone Warehouse, Europe’s leading independent retailer of mobile phones and services. By achieving this feat, Tesco can not only go on to become the number one mobile retailer in the UK, but can also bring upon a major change in the dynamics of mobile phone and mobile broadband internet market.

An analyst at CCS Insight, a research firm which provides market information, analysis and intelligence for the telecoms sector has a different take on this. According to him, it is too premature to consider the competition between the two as anything significant. The strategic plans of Tesco are important in terms of gaining a strong foothold in the mobile broadband retail sector but it still has a long way to go before matching up to Carphone Warehouse which is presently operating 900 stores in the UK.