VSNL to expand ISP presence to 80 cities

Nanda Kasabe

PUNE: Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (VSNL) is on a major expansion spree. In the

next six months, the country's exclusive international telecommunications

provider plans to rollout its Internet services in 80 Indian cities.

The rollout of the ISP services will be done in two phases covering around 20

cities in the first and the remaining in the second stage, according to its

chief general manager (Internet) K P Tiwari, who was on a visit to Pune to

oversee the Internet operations.

The first phase would cover cities where VSNL already enjoys a presence in

terms of infrastructure. "We would essentially invest in equipment to get

the ISP network going," he explained. The cities to be covered in the first

phase would include Hyderabad, Lucknow, Bhopal, Indore, Gandhinagar, Ernakulam,

Trivandrum, Patna, Bhubhaneswar and Nagpur. Tiwari expected the rollout of the

first phase to be completed by March this year. He estimated the project cost to

be around Rs 150 crore in the first phase.

The second phase would cover cities where VSNL does not enjoy a presence in

terms of infrastructure. "We are closely looking at taking the franchisee

route to quicken up the process," Tiwari revealed. The cities that would be

covered in the second phase include Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Surat, Solapur,

Kolhapur, Aurangabad, Nasik, Allahabad, Raipur, Benaras and Baroda. VSNL would

have to start from the scratch here, right from setting up the infrastructure as

neither earth stations nor gateways are available here.

The ISP plans to increase its subscriber base from the present 5.4 lakh to

6.5 lakh in the next two months. The corporation already has a presence in 20

cities across the country, which is restricted to offering frame relay circuits,

satellite circuits and providing leased lines to other ISPs.

VSNL also plans to set up a 30,000 sq. feet data center at Vashi in Navi

Mumbai soon as its existing data center, spread over 5,000 sq. feet, is already

working at optimum capacity. The new data center, which will have at least

30,000 servers, would not only help distribute traffic in a much better manner

but also help faster downloads and accessibility.

With competition in the ISP segment getting hotter by the day, VSNL has come

out with a number of value added services. Its online registration process has

been a major success with customers. "We are the only ISP that offers

online registration with a credit card," Tiwari said. Despite constraints,

VSNL sold over 5,000 such accounts in December alone. Tiwari expects that VSNL’s

new package, which offers a 3-year unlimited Internet access for Rs 500, will

find a number of takers. VSNL has targeted around 100,000 subscribers for this

service.

Commenting on upgrading international bandwidth, Tiwari said that another 100

mbps would be added to the existing bandwidth of 800 mbps. VSNL has already

unveiled its Gigabit Routed Internet Exchange to deliver high-speed ultra

flexible links to Indian Internet networks.