The Hindu Business Line : BSNL plans undersea cable link to Lanka

AFTER Bharti's i2i cable and VSNL's Tata Indicom cable on the Chennai-Singapore route, it is now Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, which is planning an undersea cable route out of India.

BSNL is planning to lay an undersea cable between Chennai and Sri Lanka, said Mr A.K. Sinha, Chairman and Managing Director, said here today.

Sri Lanka is on the route of several undersea cable systems crossing the seas from the Africa-West Asia region to South East Asia; BSNL would connect with those cables from Sri Lanka, said Mr Sinha.

BSNL is getting into international long distance business in right earnest - it has already entered into direct agreements with carriers in seven countries - - Italy, Canada, Singapore, Kuwait, Japan, France and Hong Kong.

BSNL will partner whoever provides connectivity at the least cost, said Mr Sinha, referring to his company's arrangement with VSNL, which was the preferred carrier until March of this year.

Meanwhile negotiations with VSNL, which the company continued to operate through, would continue too, he said.

BSNL's capital expenditure plan of between Rs 10,000 crore and Rs 12,000 crore includes a massive broadband deployment plan targeting 1 million customers across 200 cities by December 2005.

Another plan is to take its GSM cellular subscriber base from 5 million in December 2004 to 25 milllion by December 2005. BSNL would be tendering for equipment for the purpose very soon, he said.

BSNL would be making a series of "positive announcements" around October 14, including some on tariff rebalancing and the like.

As to the company's much discussed possible merger with Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd, Mr Sinha said benefits of effecting a merger would be worth the trouble of merging one listed company with an unlisted one.

The same could not be said of the situation two years ago, he said, but did not elaborate.

However methodology for the merger is to be decided and for that there would be experts from the Government to offer their recommendations, he said.