The proposed deal between Bharti and Spectranet for the sale of the latter’s 500 km long Optic Fiber Cable (OFC) network in Delhi and Bangalore, has created ripples in the telecom circles. This could be a pointer to various things that follow in the era of new networks, which are being laid by many prominent players. The total value of the deal is expected to be around Rs 250 crore. Bharti was desperate to buy Spectranet’s off-the-shelf OFC network, as the latter is trying to enter into basic services in Delhi and Karnataka. The deal, if struck, will be the first in the broadband space, which is likely to see more consolidation.

Spectranet, the Punj Lloyd group subsidiary, claims to be the only company in South East Asia, with a "commissioned" network of OFC providing broadband Internet connectivity to the corporates, SOHOs, SMEs and households.

What made Spectranet vulnerable? The answer, perhaps, lies in the way the project went ahead, the way it was launched and the tepid response to its services. Somewhere, something went wrong after the company commissioned its network with much fanfare in September 2000. Though Spectranet, being the only true broadband player, was the Indian benchmark by itself, corporate customers complained about the lack of service guarantees, and the subscriber numbers did not exactly measure up to the market expectations. To make matters worse, it did a poor job of selling the broadband concept. The industry experts say it was not able to create awareness about its products in a systematic manner. Its advertising campaign, which was outright abstract, was a major failure.

Sudesh Prasad

VSNL Records Another Landmark

Ships are not rare objects for Kochi citizens but the one that was seen on the moning of 11 February was, least to say, a spectacle symbolizing yet another feather in the cap of VSNL’s long history of international communications. It marked the landing of the South Africa Far East (SAFE) OFC at Kochi in Kerala. VSNL, a landing party in the SAFE project, is representing India in a consortium of 42 telecom companies from 35 countries for providing infrastructure for a wide range of telecom and IT services.

Following in the footsteps of legendary predecessors like Cable Ship (CS) Great Eastern, CS Jan Steen came to view on the Arabian Sea horizon near Cherai Beach in the early hours of the day; and a team of engineers, technicians and divers swung into action to land the 2 pair fiber cable at the beach manhole and start laying it out up to the deep sea, where it will connect to the main cable laid from Mauritius to Penang in Malaysia. This connection is likely to take place by May, while the commissioning of the SAFE system is expected by the year-end. The beach end of the cable has already been laid and installed by ITI from the beach manhole to the Kakkanad international gateway.

The initial equipped capacity of the SAFE system will be 80 Gbps expandable to 120-160 Gbps with additional terminal equipment (without any modification to the already laid submarine cable). In terms of usage, the system will have a capacity of 7.3 million simultaneous telephone calls, 1.5 million hi-speed data channels and 12,000 digital video channels. VSNL has invested Rs 231 crore ($50 million) in the $600 million SAFE system project.