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.