Advertisment

AT&T to augment sub-sea cable capacity

author-image
CIOL Bureau
Updated On
New Update

BANGALORE, INDIA: AT&T is all set to make a direct presence, from its international gateways, in India and pins hope on the Indian Government's affirmative nod to take it forth this year.

Advertisment

V S Gopi Gopinath, chairman and CEO, AT&T, said: “AT&T will invest more in Trans-Pacific Express (TPE) and Europe India Gateway (EIG), and will deploy new sub-sea fiber cable capacity to Alaska, Australia, Asia Pacific, India, Puerto Rico and the Caribbean and on Trans Atlantic routes to India.”

This announcement comes at a juncture when Verizon Business, a unit of Verizon Communications, recently gained approval from the Government of India's Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to operate two international gateways, under its international long-distance (ILD) licenses.

"AT&T has eight international gateways with international long-distance licenses (ILD) across five cities in India. As of now, we are operating our networks and offering services to our customers in India through partnerships with major Indian carriers," Gopinath added.

Advertisment

AT&T has tie-ups with Indian carriers such as Bharti, Reliance, and Mahindra, and government-owned Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL) and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL).

“We are waiting for the Indian Government's approval regarding the gateway clearance, which we hope AT&T will receive this year. So, once that is accomplished, AT&T will invest more in the TPE and EIG cable systems," Gopinath added.

Sanjeev Bhagat, managing director, AT&T, said: "EIG will provide high bandwidth, of upto 2.88 terabits (Tbps) using dense-wavelength-division-multiplexing (DWDM) to provide upgradeable transmission facilities that support Internet, e-commerce, video, data and voice, and route diversity to India, which could be helpful during cable disruptions."

Advertisment

AT&T earmarks $1bn global investment for 2009

In 2008, AT&T initiated several managed hosting services. In February, it commenced provisioning of AT&T Global Managed Internet Service (GMIS) in India, opened a Super Internet Data Centre in Singapore, and also commenced a 5,000 sq ft data centre in Bangalore, the first of its its kind, in late 2008.

"India is a very important market for AT&T. The company saw a 27 percent growth in 2008 and has earmarked $1 billion for global investment in 2009. AT&T will look into the enhancement of the AT&T intelligent content distribution service in APAC market," Gopinath added.

"We are seriously looking into the Indian telepresence market, as it will help enterprises to optimise cost. As of now, we have two customers in India and hope to see a rise in demand for this segment soon. We are also making investments into managed IP telephony and LAN/WAN services in China, India, Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia, increasing data centre hosting capacity in Hong Kong and Tokyo, as well as scaling the AT&T 'Synaptic Hosting' platform in the recently announced Super Internet Data Centre (IDC), in Singapore," Gopinath added.

tech-news