Britain's ATL Telecom, earlier known as Ascom Telecommunications, has been in the business of voice and data transmission and terminal equipment. Apart from British and European market, the company has been targeting China, India, and Indonesia in a huge way for its products. Giles Clarke, chairman and controlling shareholder of ATL Telecom, spoke to
VOICE&DATA on the company's plans to expand in the Indian market.
India has been growing by leaps and bounds in the wireless sector and you are primarily focusing on wireline products. How is ATL planning to survive in this scenario?
The Indian telecom market has come a long way and is growing fast. But the growth is not only in wireless; the fixed line services are also growing. There is a huge rural market to be covered. While we see the money or the commercial growth coming from the cities or the urban areas, there will be a political growth in the rural areas. The dynamics of politics makes it necessary to connect these areas and this will drive the demand in the rural market.
As the Indian economy booms there will be greater demand for better communication facilities. As demand will go up, people will spend more on this sector. The geographical composition of India may favor a wireless access but you cannot write off wired services. But you cannot run a big business house on mobile phones you need the fixed services for office purposes. So, wireless and fixed services both will coexist and compliment each other. We will be focusing on all types of services be it optical, wireless or copper and align ourselves according to the requirement.
What is the contribution of Indian business in your company's financial performance? Who are your customers in India?
It is still too early to disclose the Indian contribution to our over all revenues, which runs into eight digits in pound sterling terms. However, an estimate will put the Indian contribution to four percent of the pie.
Internationally we have British Telecom as our largest customer. In India, all the big operators BSNL, VSNL and Bharti use
our equipment.
Are there any plans to expand your business in India?
In sale terms, Multi Tech will be the only company dealing in our products for the Indian market. We will utilize their distributor and reseller network to sell our products here. We are also planning to set up a fixed handsets manufacturing base in India. The phones sets are already available in the market but we are going to start making them at the Multi Tech units in Gurgaon within this quarter.
With Indian companies already in the market and selling at very competitive prices, how is ATL positioning itself?
We are not going for the retail market and will focus mainly on the corporate clients. We have been following this strategy and have been participating in the tenders called by BSNL and MTNL through Multi Tech and we hope to continue with this model. Before Multi Tech became our partner, we had participated in VSNL tenders through other distributors.
Anurag Prasad
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