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Siddhar
New Delhi, Nov 18: Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd is ready to enter the domestic long-distance telephony sector by the end of this year. The new telecom policy, expected in the next few weeks, is likely to allow the entry of new players in this lucrative segment.
Additionally, the company is expected to begin work on setting up a regional hub for routing international traffic in association with British Telecom by early next year.
VSNL acting chairman and managing director Amitabh Kumar told The Financial Express that the union government was expected to give its approval to the project within a month.
On the issue of accounting rates with United States' carriers, Kumar said that negotiations were on at the moment and a final decision would be taken in a fortnight.
VSNL, the sole carrier for international voice traffic from India, has finalised a proposal to offer domestic long distance services. The company promises to offer services within hours of getting the necessary approval.
The proposal assumes significance in the light of the new telecom policy guidelines being framed to increase competition in the industry by opening up long-distance services in a two-month timeframe.
Kumar said that operational readiness for the service was already in place. "We will only have to reprogramme existing software to enable the calls to go through," he added.
At present, VSNL has a nationwide network of routers to carry international call traffic. The software has been programmed to prevent domestic long distance calls from going through. The reprogramming can be done in a very short period of time.
According to Kumar, a number of private Internet service providers have approached the company to be part of VSNL's Internet exchange. Declining to give the names, Kumar said that his company had devised a solution for national and regional access by bifurcating the service into three parts. These are the "access service", "ISP service" and "content service".
VSNL is also currently setting up a network management centre at Calcutta at an investment of Rs 80 crore. The centre is expected to be commissioned by March, 1999, and will centrally link the huge amount of traffic emanating from VSNL's six gateways and 30 earth stations.
Meanwhile, the company is gearing up to face competition and is planning to embark on a recruitment drive shortly. Nearly 200 highly specialised personnel, including engineers and software specialists, will join VSNL. The company currently employs around 3,000 people.
Other senior-level appointments are already in the pipeline with Rajneesh Gupta being posted as director, network management centre at Calcutta. Two other appointments, director (finance) and director (development) are also expected to be announced shortly.
Insight
A move in the right direction: DoT's monopoly over domestic long-distance telephony is slated to end sometime in 1999. It makes sense for VSNL to enter the lucrative sector. Long-distance telephony is normally the cash cow for any telecom service provider. With 16 earth stations already in place, VSNL has the requisite infrastructure to enter this sector. Moreover VSNL, expecting its monopoly over international telephony to end in 2004, is in the process of setting up a `Super Internet' based on a complex 320,000 km fibre-optic submarine cable network, scheduled to connect 175 countries through 265 landing points. VSNL (landing party) would terminate and originate traffic coming in and out of India through its own envisaged domestic network without being dependent on DoT. Also, when the international project is completed in 2003, VSNL would benefit because the network will support voice and data transmission at super speeds ranging from 320 gbps (Giga bytes per second) to 1 terabit per second.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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This story was printed from Net Express located at http://www.expressindia.com. Net Express provides a portal to India, with news from The Indian Express and The Financial Express along with sites on travel and tourism, the entertainment industry, the power sector, the environment and much more.
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