PUNE, MARCH 7: After a long period of smooth sailing, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL), India's telecommunications monolith, now forsees troubled waters ahead. It has finally declared "Operation Flood" to maintain its monopoly in the Indian market.As a first step towards this direction, VSNL has decided to set up a shell company which will act its subsidiary for the provision value added services. The company will be launched on April 1 and would become fully operational from September this year.Speaking to the The Indian Express Brijendra K Syngal, Chairman and Managing Director, VSNL, said that the shell company would add at least Rs 40 to 50 crores to the existing revenue of the Nigam standing at around Rs 70 crores, from the second year of its service.He said that the main purpose of setting up of a shell company was to to make up for the lack of aggressiveness and customer care in the existing VSNL services and which formed an essential part of service provision in the competitivemarket.Describing the High Court decision stalling the awarding of licences to private Internet Service Providers (ISPs) by Department of Telecommunications (DoT) as a "window of opportunity" for VSNL, Syngal said Nigam would use the time frame for extensively adding new lines and international connectivity. Besides areas such as customer support would be specially attended to as a part of the "Operation Flood".Also among the series of measures chalked out VSNL to maintain its monopoly, is establishment of more gateways in different cities in the country depending upon their educational, commercial and strategic importance. Gateway facilities will be established in high traffic generating centres like in Gandhinagar, Hyderabad, Kanpur, Ernakulam, Jallandhar and Banagalore. At Ernakulam, Jallandhar and Kanpur work has already started to establish small Earth Stations, gateway exchanges and other telecommunications facilities like E-mail Internet services etc. To create more public awareness about thevarious services offered by VSNL, the Nigam will launch a special information service in Mumbai from Monday, March 9 which will allow instant access to all information on the VSNL. This service will be shortly extended to other centres. Even the recently introduced the facility of payment by credit cards in Mumbai will be soon extended in other cities as well.Syngal said that the revenue earning capabilities of the internet service, which were a meagre 0.3 per cent of VSNL's revenues in 1996-97, are expected to go up to 1.5 per cent, amounting to about Rs. 70 crores, by March 1999.While speaking at a function held in the city on Friday, Syngal lamented that VSNL had to pay nearly six times more than a US based private internet service provider per every 2 megabits added for the international connectivity purpose. Describing it as highly discriminatory he said that it made the internet services more expensive. About the steep slash in the rates of internet tariff, he said that the strategy had furtherwidened VSNL subscriber base in the country with 26,000 new customers added to the existing list within last two months after the rates were decreased.
