With the commissioning of additional capacity, the total Internet bandwidth from India has gone up to 165 mbps. The new capacity will reduce the time in connecting to less than 200 milliseconds from around 800 milliseconds now.

VSNL, in a statement, said internet subscribers and leased line customers will now have higher throughput, which is available using the fibre optic media connections direct to the US.

The new capacity being commissioned is the single largest link commissioned till date from India by VSNL. Earlier links were of 2 and 8 mbps capacity each.

VSNL hopes that the FLAG system will improve multimedia traffic and new facilities like e-commerce for fast transactions. Also, this level of bandwidth under such a system will remove internationalbandwidth limitations. Independent traffic report monitors such as Andover News Network has described India as one of the best performing among the ISPs in Asia.

At present, around 30 ISPs in India use the VSNL connectivity and another 20 more companies have shown interest to take up connectivity through the company. The projections of worldwide bandwidth for the current year based on estimates stands at 400 mbps. VSNL is also planning to invite ISPs and other leased line customers to an interactive fora to demonstrate the high quality performance parametres which are now being achieved through its internet linkages worldwide. The linkage currently commissioned in Mumbai is being extended over very high speed link to other metros.