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Journalism of Courage
MUMBAI, NOV 4: The Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited VSNL has adopted an aggressive two-pronged strategy to tackle competition from private internet service providers ISPs and, at the same time, exploit demand for international connectivity from these operators.
Following the announcement of the ISP policy, acting CMD, Amitabh Kumar, told The Indian Express that the international carrier would launch e-commerce e-com services within the next month. quot;At least one e-commerce platform will definitely be ready by December,quot; he said.
Realising the enormous potential in the corporate market, it has also chalked out a plan to offer complete solutions for corporates including mail servers, domain name service DNS and integration of the company networks to the internet.
This apart, it will implement a project by which subscribers can opt to receive e-mail on their pagers. This service promises to be of tremendous advantage to subscribers who do not possess laptops or expensive PDAs and need to access theirmail fairly frequently, even while travelling. Talks are currently on with paging service operators in major cities and the service should be available by January, Kumar revealed.
The VSNL is also pursuing its plan to set up a separate subsidiary to offer these internet related services, according to Kumar. The organisation would like to concentrate on its role as an international carrier and gateway, while hiving off the ISP divisions to the subsidiary. However, the Centre has not shown much enthusiasm to approve it, so far.
As a gateway, the VSNL in a very advantageous position with six gateways and 100 Mbps of spare bandwidth. New ISPs will have establish these links or lease bandwidth on from other companies. An ISP would typically need anything from 2 Mbps to 10 Mbps to start services, depending on the number of subscribers it has. VSNL plans to capture at least thirty of the 200-odd ISPs which are to apply for licences with its competitive rates, Kumar said.
In fact, VSNL is developing this amajor business and hopes to earn substantial revenue from leasing bandwidth even in the coming years. It has planned major investments amounting to around 30 million in more of these international cable links. quot;There is lot of scope for bulk connectivity,quot; added Kumar.
Fibre optic cables offer the best route to international connectivity. Satellites, on the other hand are much slower with lower throughput. Regarding reduction in tariff, Kumar said it was up to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India to okay any change. quot;Normally the incumbent operator is not allowed to reduce charges because it puts the competition at a disadvantage,quot; Kumar said, quot;But this does not mean we won8217;t propose it.quot; He said tariff for internet leased lines could be reduced by as much as 50 per cent as capacity went up.
