Mumbai: GAILTEL (the telecom services arm of GAIL), RAILTEL (a 100 per cent subsidiary under the ministry of railway) and Power Grid Corporation have inked a pact for a strategic alliance to face a competitive scenario in telecom. The three government owned entities will harness their synergies in telecom and optimally utilise their infrastructure on mutually agreed terms for maximum value addition to each organisation.

The integrated network of the three PSUs will cover over 60,000 route kilo metres (RKM) currently, which would be expanded to 75,000 RKM with the completion of ongoing works in next two to three years. Currently, the network covers about 340 of the of 600 dstrict headquarters in the country.

In terms of the number of point of presence (POPs), the combined network would have more than 2,300 POPs. So far, almost all mobile operators besides internet service providers (ISPs) and other service providers (OSPs) have signed on as customers.

Besides the backbone optical fibre cable (OFC) network of more than 60,000km, the consortium would also have an extensive intra-city OFC network in more than 60 important cities to provide end to end services. Together the consortium will have a network next only to incumbent BSNL.

GAILTEL has a 13,000km network connecting 110 cities, Power Grid has a 19,500km network connecting about 60 major cities and metros, while RAILTEL has a 27,500km-long route connecting more than 2,200 towns including metros, mini metros and other important cities.

With the business inherently based on marginal cost economics, coupled with the synergising of resources, the consortium feels that it is uniquely positioned to offer highly competitive prices. Having their fibers in highly secure Right of Use (ROU) primarily along pipelines, power transmission lines and railway lines, coupled with multiple layers of redundancy, the companies can offer quality and reliability.

With a country-wide presence, the consortium aims to target the enterprise segment by providing virtual private network (VPN), broadband and managed services. The consortium can complement the government''s e-learning and e-governance and even provide national long distance and international long distance services.