The company plans to offer these transponders at nearly $ 300,000 cheaper than competition. VSNL has already received firm bookings from a number of broadcasters for the transponders, capable of carrying two channels per transponder.

VSNL acting chairman & managing director Amitabh Kumar told The Financial Express that the prices per transponder compared favourably with the existing market price of $1.2 million being charged by foreign satellite service companies.

"These transponders will be much cheaper than foreign satellite transponders", he added. Eight Indian satellite channels including Asia Net, Surya TV, Sun TV, Uday TV among other South India based channels will use these transponders.

Intelsat, one of the five international satellite consortiumsleases out transponder space on the Indian Insat series of satellites. VSNL has booked the transponders on the Insat-2E satellite, in view of the growing demand from Indian television channels for reliable transponder space through the high-powered Intelsat constellation. The acquisition of the transponders was completed over the past three months.

Kumar added that demand for transponder space will go up with foreign owned channels uplinking from India. With the acquisition of additional transponder space, VSNL now has a total of 19 transponders.

Meanwhile, VSNL which has embarked on a programme of co-opting a core group of high quality specialists has appointed Vinoo Goyal as director (development) at the New Delhi office. He will be responsible for overlooking the entire corporate planning and strategy making exercise of VSNL.

In addition, Goyal will also oversee the project development efforts, new alliances and joint ventures. Goyal will also function as the overall head of the Northern region ofVSNL. Goyal, a member of the Indian Telecom Service 1972 batch, joined VSNL from Telecom Consultants India Ltd (TCIL), where he held the post of group general manager.