V Srinivasan, chief operating officer, DishnetDSL

Is Tyco planning to go all alone or do you plan to partner with it for the Chennai-Singapore cable project?
In this project, Tyco will be responsible for supplying, installing, commissioning, and maintaining the undersea cable system. Tyco will not be investing any equity capital but will own two fiber pairs in the system. From Singapore, DishnetDSL is acquiring capacities on Tyco’s global network to carry seamless traffic to the US.

What is the status of the project?
In terms of funding, the final rounds for obtaining funding are underway and financial closure is expected to be achieved shortly. Dishnet has already completed the marine survey for the project. We will only lay cable for the Chennai-Singapore segment and will ride on the Tyco network for connectivity to the US. The project will be ready to carry commercial traffic by Q4 2002.

Negotiations are on with various government bodies for seeking approval for the landing station in Chennai, and the construction at the landing station is expected to commence soon.

What is the total investment planned for the project and how are you planning to fund your project?
The cost of Chennai to US connectivity, which comprises the Chennai to Singapore cable system and capacity purchase from Singapore to the US will cost around $240 million. The proposed financing structure envisages Siva Limited, Bermuda (an affiliate of Dishnet) investing $120 million, Prudential Infrastructure of Hong Kong investing $30 million by way of equity and subordinated debt. The company is raising debt from IDBI and IDFC for funding the balance amount.

What is the capacity of the ongoing project?
It’s 7.68 Tbps.

As the cable project does not have a return path how are you planning to provide redundancy on your cable?
As regards to protection, the project will be in a position to provide span protection for dealing with any potential outage within the same fiber pair. The company is exploring other possibilities for providing additional protection.

How do you plan to market the service in the country as it seems that there will be an excess capacity once i2i and SAFE submarine cable projects are operational?

We believe that we have a state-of-the-art system with capacities being acquired at incremental cost. We have the potential to leverage our existing strengths and resources in India as well as abroad to provide high-quality international bandwidth at prices that are a fraction of existing prices.