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| Tamil
Nadu is a gold mine for
telecom players
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Our
Convergence Bureau
21 September 2002 |
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Chennai:
The improvement in telecom infrastructure has resulted
in communication getting added to our list of daily priorities
in life, like vegetables and cooking gas. India has the
sixth largest telecom network in the world with 38.5 million
landlines and is growing at a compounded annual growth rate
of 17 per cent.
Speaking on the telecommunications connectivity, at the
Connect 2002 conference organised by the Confederation of
Indian Industry (CII) at Chennai, Bharti Telenet CEO K Krishnan
said: A 1-per cent increase in tele-density means a 2-per
cent hike in the gross domestic product. The industry is
hopeful of achieving the tele-density targets set by the
Telecom Policy: 7 per cent of tele-density by 2005 and 15
per cent by 2010.
Terming Tamil Nadu a gold mine as far as telecom business
is concerned, Krishnan said there are around 3.6 million
connections totalling an investment of around Rs 36 billion
per annum. The state registers a growth rate of 16 per cent
per year. The state has a tele-density of 5.3, well above
the national average of 3.7, and Chennai alone has the tele-density
of 19.5, above Hyderabads 13.2 and Bangalores 18.7.
According to him, private operators including Bharti, Reliance
and Tata Tele Services are planning to cover 100 towns in
seven years for the basic telephony network. He said the
i2i-based 8.4 tbps submarine link that his company had established
between Chennai and Singapore will go a long way in providing
the necessary connectivity infrastructure to the state.
VSNL director (operations) N Srinath said opportunities
for the corporate data services business is very huge. While
outlining the investments and growth made in transoceanic
cable capacity, he said there is no paucity for bandwidth
anywhere. On cost and performance counts the cable system
fares better than satellite systems.
Highlighting the opportunities for Indian companies in China,
Vision Century Corporation managing director Chua Tiow Chye
said: Indian companies enjoy a cost advantage over Chinese
software outfits. For instance, salaries of Chinese software
professionals are 20 per cent higher than Indian professionals.
Further, China suffers from acute shortage of software analysts
and project managers.
Chinas
software export value was US $0.85 billion, while that of
India was $6.2 billion. Software exports as a percentage
of total exports in China is a meagre 0.37 per cent and
that of India is 14.7 per cent. Chye said there is immense
scope for Indian companies to enter into joint ventures
with Chinese companies and help them offer products built
around Indian expertise.
With sudden disasters looming round the corner natural
and manmade corporates worldover will have to focus on
disaster recovery and business continuity planning. Anthony
Lim, regional director, Asia Pacific, Check Point Software,
explained that business continuity planning in the context
of network security means continuous working without any
downtime.
Urging corporates to have proper business continuity plans
to deliver customer requirements, Lim felt that virtual
private networks are a good solution. Agreeing with him
on the issue of security and continuity in business operations
with India becoming a centre for business process outsourcing
(BPO) was Ram Bhagwat, managing director, OrbiTech Solutions.
Today international organisations are locating their headquarters
away from trophy locations and countries.
He said though technology has brought in several benefits,
it has also increased our dependency. Every business needs
to identify the risks and then plan to mitigate the risk
to ensure continuity and survival.
Corporates
should see the difference between the risks related to business
and those related to disasters, as the latter has the capacity
to totally disrupt activity, summed up Manoj Kunkalienkar,
joint president, ICICI Infotech Services.
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