VSNL, ITXC to offer ILD service

BANGALORE: VSNL and global wholesale voice carriers, ITXC Corp, have joined hands to where the former will be implementing long distance services with ITXC. Through its connection to ITXC.net, VSNL will have access to ITXC's relationships with hundreds of carriers around the world.

"We are pleased to connect to ITXC's global tier one network. We look forward to delivering competitive, high quality voice services and growing call termination volume as we interconnect in this new way to carriers around the world," said VSNL, Managing Director, SK Gupta

"We applaud the steps the Indian government has taken to create a competitive telecommunications market in India including the very successful privatization of VSNL," remarked ITXC, Chairman and CEO, Tom Evslin.

"Clearly today's announcement of a competitive thrust by VSNL, now part of the Tata group, is evidence of progress towards the government's goals of greater and more affordable access to telecommunications both in India and between India and the rest of the world. ITXC is proud to be able to help achieve these economic and social goals by working with VSNL which is already the premier provider of international voice and data services in India," he added.

Earlier this year India deregulated its telecommunications industry and the international long distance telecom market officially opened to competition on April 1. As India's largest incumbent international carrier, VSNL is modernizing its offering and leveraging its brand by bringing new technologies to bear, including the solution ITXC provides.

With a population of 1 billion, India represents a huge current and potential market despite its 4 percent teledensity. In 2000, India had 527 million outgoing minutes and 2.2 billion incoming minutes according to TeleGeography 2002. Typically as telecommunications becomes competitive, prices decreases and that in turn stimulates the growth of traffic and teledensity by making phone calls affordable.

India's Minister of Communications, Pramod Mahajan, made a statement earlier this year that he expects teledensity in India to increase to 7 percent by 2005 stimulated by lower tariffs for domestic long distance as well as international long distance telephony. According to Pyramid Research, Asia-Pacific Telecom analyst, Fei Li, India's voice service market will represent $13.3 billion in revenue for 2002.