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Follow UsBharti Telesonic, a subsidiary of Bharti Televentures Ltd., has announced a
drop of upto 50 per cent in International call rates. The International Long
Distance services will be provided by Bharti under the brand name "IndiaOne"
which recently revolutionized National Long Distance services in India by
catalyzing steep cuts in domestic long distance call charges by over 62 per
cent.
In phase - I "IndiaOne" has entered into bilateral agreements with
nine international carriers accounting for 90 per cent of all traffic coming to
India. The company already has an interconnect with almost all cellular
operators in the country and is negotiating interconnects with BSNL and MTNL.
Bharti after requisite clearances will offer its network to all carriers on a
non-discriminatory basis. Carriers will now connect to Bharti's network and
enjoy rates, which will enable them to offer deep discounts to the end-consumer.
A total investment of Rs 100 crore is planned for the project, of which Rs 75
crore has already been spent.
"IndiaOne" will offer Carrier Access Circle (CAC), which will give
the end-customer a choice in selecting his carrier of International long
distance calls. Soon a host of new value added services like pre-paid IDD/ISD
calling cards, free phone service, premium rate services etc. will be provided
to the Indian consumer.
The Bharti network is based on an IP centric backbone. The network deploys
high capacity fibre optic network to carry both voice and data traffic. The
multi services platform comprises TDM switch layer, an ATM and IP layer and an
Intelligent network (IN) to offer value added services like pre-paid calling
card, free phone service, premium rate service, universal access number and
virtual private networks (VPN).
"IndiaOne" has laid approximately 14000 kilometers of optical fibre
cable covering 90 cities. The current plans include another 14000 kilometers
over the next 12 - 15 months. At present "IndiaOne" has switches in 9
cities and nodes in 90 cities and plans to deploy 11 additional switches.
"IndiaOne" has tied up with companies like Lucent, Siemens, Alcatel,
Nortel and Corning for providing state of the art technology. While Siemens will
provide the switch and the IN platform, Alcatel will provide the ATM switch.
Nortel will provide the SDH equipment and Corning the fibre. Lucent will provide
the billing system.
According to Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman and group managing director,
Bharti Enterprises, "We are proud to have revolutionized the Long Distance
services sector in India and played our part in passing on the benefits of
privatization as envisioned in the NTP '99 to the Indian consumer. Bharti will
soon usher the Indian consumer into a new era of high quality International Long
Distance services."