The Hindu Business Line : BT open to sharing its infrastructure with telcos

New Delhi May 25 UK-based international long distance voice and data solution provider BT is open to sharing its infrastructure with Indian telecom companies.

The company, which had recently announced its foray into the Indian market in a major way, is also planning to bring some of its global services including networked IT services and outsourced wide area network services to corporates in India.

Fostering tie-ups

In response to an e-mail questionnaire, Mr Francois Barrault, newly appointed Chief Executive Officer, BT Global Services, told Business Line, "We have very strong partnerships with many of the local telcos and are actively looking at expanding these relationships on a continuous basis. We are also open to sharing our infrastructure to provide enhanced services to our customers. As a matter of fact, we jointly share three nodes in India with Bharti."

On bringing new services to India, Mr Barrault said: "BT has some wonderful services which have been major successes globally and now with our licence in place, we would like to roll them out shortly. We will provide networked IT services to all corporates in India across sectors — whether it is banking or finance, pharmaceuticals, BPO, IT, and hospitality. BT will also provide WAN services on an outsourced model, application management. I also want to showcase our prowess in the area of global sourcing and managed services where we have had some significant wins."

More nodes

In March 2007, the company activated its first node in Chennai and going forward it will set up such nodes in seven more cities across India over the next few months.

"India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world and a very important geography for BT; outside the UK this is our biggest set-up," said Mr Barrault.

BT had recently announced its intention to acquire i2i Enterprise, an enterprise services company specialising in Internet Protocol communication services. Currently, the company employs over 15,000 people (directly and indirectly) in Asia Pacific, the majority of whom are in India. The company plans to hire an additional 6,000 people by 2009.

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