STPI plans to provide an international gateway through bandwidth management to corporates, who in turn will become ISPs at local levels.

Top DoT sources told The Financial Express that STPI is among the 120 applicants who have sought licences after the new ISP policy was announced by the BJP-led government. STPI, which plans to increase the present international gateway from 9 to 15, will become a competitor to the Videsh Sanchar Vigam Ltd (VSNL) which has six international gateways.

Once the infrastructure is in place, STPI will provide solutions and bandwidth to corporates who will become ISPs at local levels. Rolta, CitiCorp Information Technology India, Onward, Datamatics, Global Telesystem and others have approached STPI for providing bandwidth whichwill vary between 2 megabytes and 20 megabytes per second.

STPI will be entitled for interconnection of its earth stations in Chandigarh, Jaipur, Noida, Bhuvaneshwar, Gandhinagar, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Bangalaore and Thiruvananthapuram. These earthstations serve as international gateways and looking at IntelSat satellite.

These gateways were integrated with line of sight point to multipoint digital time division multiplexing access (TDMA) equipment for connecting the user premises located outside the complex by means of microwave links. The units operating inside the complex have access through these facilities through the local area network.

With the interconnectivity of earthstations in place, IT units can benefit from any of these earthstations for additional bandwidth. At present, the IT unit has to rely on a particular earthstation of STPI for bandwidth.

STPI, which has so far used bandwidth of 40 megabyte per second, in the last four years, hopes to use the equal bandwidth in a year afterreceiving the ISP licence.

STPI has also designed and established an integrated network service, SoftNet, for providing a variety of value-added services that are needed for software development and export growth. SoftNet provides SoftPoint, a leased channel digital point-to-point service, while a SoftLink is a multi-vendor network providing access to the Internet. The customer is connected on the port on a router and has direct Internet access.

SoftNet also provides SoftCONF a two-way full motion picture quality video conference facility between software technology park locations and the rest of the world.

STPI will set up a Rs 3-crore earthstation with a bandwidth capacity of 20 MBPS in the additional Seepz area by May 1, 1999. State government sources said that chief secretary P Subrahmaniam has directed government agencies to ensure that STPI establishes its earthstation by May 1 next year. The additional Seepz will be developed on five acres adjacent to the existing one at Andheri in north-westMumbai.

The government plans to connect the proposed millenium park at Mhape (being developed by the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation), Seepz and the Infotech Park at Vashi via optic fibre link. This corridor will be extended to the Pune earthstation so that the Mumbai and Pune units will be connected seemlessly.