• Investment World
• eWorld
• Brand Line
• Mentor
• Life
• Canvas
• Praxis
• Urban Pulse
• Brand Quest
• The New Manager

Stocks

• Quotes
• SE Diary
• Scoreboard
• Open-End Mutual Fund

Cross Currency

• Rates
  
  

Shipping

• Ports
  
  

Archives

• Yesterday
• Datewise
• Resources
• In Focus
• In Depth

Group Sites

• The Hindu
• The Hindu ePaper
• Business Line
• Business Line ePaper
• Sportstar
• Frontline
• The Hindu eBooks
• The Hindu Images

Thomas K Thomas

Will enable users get high speed Internet connectivity

New Delhi May 23 State owned Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd has awarded a Rs 170-crore contract to Sterlite Optic Technologies Ltd (SOTL) for rolling out 5-lakh broadband connections in Delhi and Mumbai.

Local telecom equipment manufacturer and integrator SOTL emerged as the lowest bidder. Chinese manufacturer ZTE, Siemens from Germany and the US-based UTStarcom had also participated in the bidding.

Major Milestone

Confirming the deal, MTNL sources said that the project was one of the biggest broadband roll-outs being undertaken by the PSU which would enable users to get services such as high speed Internet and other value-added services such as VPN, Video Multicast and Video on Demand.

The telecom PSU has set a target of 5-lakh broadband users by the end of the financial year in both Delhi and Mumbai. Currently, the company has about 3-lakh broadband subscribers and a waiting list of 18,000 in Mumbai and 8,000 in Delhi.

For SOTL too, this contract marks a major milestone in its endeavour to change its strategy to becoming a complete telecom access solutions provider from providing just optic fibre cables.

Broadband Growth

The company has also got into manufacturing broadband modems at its Aurangabad facility. The modems will be marketed outside the country as well.

MTNL and BSNL are leading the broadband growth in the country. The total subscriber base now stands at 2.5 million.

The Government has declared 2007 as the year of the broadband and has set a target of 10 million subscribers. The growth potential in broadband services has prompted equipment manufacturers to bet big on India. UTStarcom, ZTE and Siemens have recently signed a contract from BSNL to deploy 1.3 million broadband lines across 900 cities in the country for about Rs 900 crore.

In a bid to boost broadband penetration in the country, the Department of Telecom has also decided to extend support from the Universal Services Obligation Fund to operators offering broadband services in rural areas. This is in addition to the earlier decision to support cellular telephone infrastructure in the villages through the USO Fund.

More Stories on : New Business | Broadband | Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd

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

Stories in this Section
Capgemini forms strategic business unit for financial services

Copyright © 2007, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line