Mumbai, June 7: The foreign telecom company to partner the state-owned Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL) in its $500 million regional hub project will follow suit in providing long distance services within India too. According to sources, VSNL has planned this move as there is a lot of synergy in routing international and domestic long distance calls.VSNL has already announced its intentions to provide domestic long distance services when the services are thrown open to competition. At present, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has a monopoly in providing long distance services within the country. The monopoly of DoT on the service is coming up for review next year.According to sources, the regional hub, which proposes to route all international telephone traffic originating from the South Asian region, can also be used to route domestic long distance traffic. This, they add, will mean an optimum use of the hub's resources which can also result in cost savings.VSNL recently shortlisted thebids of Cable & Wireless, British Telecommunications-MCI and Global One from a total of seven bids it received for its proposed regional hub. The three bidders have been given time till June 11 to submit their detailed proposal for the hub.The final partner is expected to be chosen following an evaluation of the fresh bids in about a month after the detailed proposals are received by VSNL.While Cable & Wireless has bid alone for the project, the other two are consortia comprising three companies each. While the BT-MCI bid has a third partner in the form of Marubeni of Japan, Global One is a consortium comprising France Telecom, Deutsche Telekom and Sprint of the US.The process of shortlisting the bids had got considerably delayed due to a variety of reasons. Initially, a high power committee was formed comprising members from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and VSNL to evaluate and shortlist the bids which took time. The committee was then unable to meet for some time due to the globaldepositary receipt issue of Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL).
