PCCW Indian JV launches Net service in Mumbai

MUMBAI: Hong Kong Internet and telecom group Pacific Century CyberWorks (PCCW)

on Thursday launched its combined Internet and TV service in the financial

capital of Mumbai through its Indian joint venture.

Data Access India, a joint venture between PCCW and the local SPA

Enterprises, had launched the fledgling Network of the World (NOW) service in

New Delhi two months ago.

Data Access is one of India's few Internet service providers (ISP) which has

its own Internet gateways in New Delhi and in Mumbai, where it began offering

ISP services from Thursday.

The dedicated gateways will allow Data Access to provide high-speed and

better quality Internet services, Siddhartha Ray, its managing director, told a

news conference.

Most ISPs in India buy bandwidth from the state-run Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd

(VSNL) but a number of players have announced plans to set up their own

gateways, after the government ended VSNL's monopoly in June 1999.

Ray said NOW would be able to offer Internet and TV services to narrowband

and broadband users.

Broadband brings Internet, video, phone and other multimedia services with

CD-like sound to homes and office at high speed.

Ray, however, said he expects little deployment of broadband in India now.

"Less than one per cent of our subscriber base will be using broadband,

at least in 2001," he said.

About 90 per cent of Indians were using the Internet only to chat and for

e-mail services and some browsing, he said.

"Broadband deployment needs 20 times more bandwidth per subscriber than

narrowband and has to be charged accordingly."

Data Access has outlined an investment of $100 million for the launch of NOW

in four Indian cities of New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore.

The firm had 24,000 subscribers in New Delhi within two months of its launch

and is adding 400 per day, Ray said. He expects to add 1,000 subscribers per day

in Mumbai.

NOW will be launched in the two southern Indian cities of Bangalore and

Chennai by January and could be expanded to 26 other cities by the first quarter

of 2001 if the service picks up, Ray said.

(C) Reuters Limited 2000.