The Hindu Business Line : GAIL to invest Rs 750 cr on telecom infrastructure

IN a bid to capitalise on the booming bandwidth market, GAIL (India) Ltd on Thursday announced an investment of Rs 750 crore for expansion of its telecom optic fibre cable network, under GAILTel, over a period of five years. The company is also exploring the possibility of foraying into the telecom services segment in the future.

Mr Prashanto Banerjee, Managing Director, GAIL (India), said, "GAILTel sales have increased 75 per cent in the year 2003-05 to Rs 20.5 crore. It has emerged as the largest Infrastructure Provider-II operator in India. The company plans to cover 150 cities with its optic fibre cable compared to 73 cities at present."

As part of its expansion plans, GAILTel is laying 3,000-km of optic fibre cables in South India and another 400 km across Delhi, Mumbai and other four cities. At present, the company has 8,000-km of fibre cable network.

The telecom subsidiary also plans to ride on GAIL's National Gas Grid and City Gas Network to lay cables along the pipeline. GAILTel will create an overall network stretching 20,000 km along trunk routes and another 20,000 km of city networks. This will make it the fourth largest optic fibre cable network after BSNL, MTNL and Reliance Infocomm, which have 4.5-lakh km, 1.5-lakh km and 50,000-km of optic cable network, respectively. Other public sector companies like RailTel is planning to roll out a 30,000-km fibre cable network which will improve the domestic bandwidth availability for consumers.

GAILTel's expansion plan is based on a report from consulting firm Mckinsey & Company. "We expect the bandwidth market to grow by 30 per cent annually over the next five years. We want to position ourselves as the leader in this segment," said Mr J.K. Singh Teotia, General Manager, GAILTel.

Major service providers such as Hutch, Escotel, Tata Teleservices, Data Access, Bharti Infotel and VSNL are among GAILTel's customers.

More Stories on : Telecommunications | Petroleum

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
GAIL to invest Rs 750 cr on telecom infrastructure

TRAI pulls up operators for misreporting data

BSNL pre-paid connections

TN bid to expedite Nanguneri park

Public debate likely on taxation of BPO units

Datamatics net down 7 per cent

Polaris trims NEC project team

Sarnoff to ramp up Bangalore centre

Subex Q1 net up 26 pc

Kale bags Kuoni contract

Satyam partners OATSystems

Data Access to offload 30-35% equity — Scraps IPO plans on objections from SEBI

Wipro, eGain tie up