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The first foreign telecom carrier to receive the much-coveted direct license for NLD and ILD in India, AT&T Global, is fine-tuning its processes as it prepares to begin full-fledged operations by Jan 2007. John Finnegan, senior vice president, Global Sales, AT&T Global Services and Sanjiv Bhagat, managing director & CEO of AT&T India spell out their plans for India.
AT&T has been operational in India for the past six years, so what changes now after getting the licenses for ILD and NLD?
So far we have been in alliance with VSNL for our services in India, now with the NLD and ILD licenses we will be able to focus on our existing clientele of multinational companies who need domestic and international bandwidth and services. The new telecom licence will enable AT&T to introduce a range of advanced networking services and solutions, and to fully integrate India into AT&T's. While AT&T owns the majority stake, 74%, Mahindra holds the rest of the equity in the newly formed company.
Will it affect your relationship with existing partnerships?
We intend to further strengthen our relationships with existing partners like Reliance, Tata Teleservices and Bharti. We will buy domestic bandwidth from them and bundle with our services. There could be other opportunities like co-location services which we can bundle with our products. Our key differentiator with our license is the fact that we can maintain direct contact with customers.
What is your first priority as you begin to roll out new services?
We still have a few hurdles to overcome before we become operational from Jan 2007. These are mainly to do with operational issues related to commercial agreements. Our topmost priority is to ensure smooth and transparent customer transition without affecting our customers' network. After that we plan to offer them new services in line with our global services. These will include enhancement of existing services like adding more security services, we are also keen on adding Internet services in the coming months.
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-John Finnegan,
SR VP, Global Sales
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-Sanjiv Bhagat, MD & CEO |
As the first phase of service offering we will be concentrating on VPN services, through our flagship product called eVPN. We also have end-to-end ATM services for hi-speed bandwidth. Most of our MNCs are also asking for specific services beyond the network like network integration and management, like providing local area networks and remote access VPN.
Why did you choose to go for NLD license in addition to ILD?
We have a large client base of mostly multinational companies-both foreign and Indian. Today these clients have to sign up with us for international bandwidth needs as well as with several other local service providers for domestic services like VPN, MPLS-based VPN, remote access services etc. Which means the companies do not have a single point of sales for both ILD and NLD as of today. We decided to cater to these MNCs so that we can offer them a single throat to choke when it comes to providing both ILD and NLD services. However, at this point of time, we don't have a plan to offer a standalone domestic service.
Can you share details of your International operations?
AT&T global provides MPLS-based IP services in 137 countries around the world. We are following our customers; we go wherever they are going. As a result, in addition to obtaining telecommunications licenses in countries such as India and China, in 2006 we have installed additional network nodes in Malaysia, Vietnam, Pakistan, Cyprus, Dubai and Saudi Arabia and new network interconnections in Vietnam, Russia, the Nordics, Brazil, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
How important is India as a market for AT&T?
India, China and Brazil are among the three fastest growing markets. We are encouraged by India as a potentially significant market. We have seen our revenues grow 40% in the first nine months of this year in India. Among Global MNCs in India, we are the leading provider of VPNs. We see a lot of interest in our customers here wanting to do video conferencing, and voice over the network. Although India is a small contributor to our revenue, we are very excited of the vast opportunity AT&T has here. Indian customers are extremely quality conscious as they are expanding globally. Most of the large customers are looking to build data onto networks. We partner with them to provide VoIP. We outsource telecom software development and some of the other work to IBM and Indian players.
How many nodes of operations do you have and what are your plans of expansion?
We have four points of presence or nodes – Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai and a fifth is coming up in Hyderabad, which will be operational by end of Dec. These nodes are absolutely similar to other AT&T nodes across the globe. We maintain the same quality of services and SLAs. We also want to reach out to class B & C cities and are evaluating options to partner with local partners to reach out to other cities. Our target customer lies in the enterprise segment that is looking for bandwidth needs for global operations. Core areas are BFSI vertyicals, ITES and manufacturing.
AT&T has got a head start in India among the other foreign telecom carriers, how would you leverage this position?
We would welcome competition from our traditional global competitors in India as well as from the likes of Cable & Wireless, British Telecom and Orange. India is going to be no different from what we have achieved in the other 137 countries. Our differentiation has been the quality of the network, our ubiquity, delivery of IP services and the fact that we sell internationally. In India the differentiation would be in service. We would also have a significant network with depth within the country. We can also provide customer care and sales support for local customers.
Malovika Rao
malovikar@cybermedia.co.in
Source: Voice&Data
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