Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Monday, Sep 24, 2007
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Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Monday, Sep 24, 2007 ePaper |
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eWorld
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Interview Info-Tech - Telecommunications In expansion mode
Randall Stephenson Thomas K Thomas Randall Stephenson, CEO, AT&T, spoke to eWorld about the company’s India plans. Excerpts from the interview: How important is the Indian market for AT&T’s global operation? We were the first foreign telecom operator to receive new ILD/NLD licences last year and the first to become fully operational this year. We are ideally positioned to serve our international customers as well as the growing number of Indian companies that are expanding globally. Two of our subsidiaries, Sterling Commerce and USinternetworking, also have a strong and growing presence in the country. India is the fastest growing and highest revenue-generating market of the 13 economies where AT&T operates in the Asia-Pacific region (which excludes Japan). In 2006, our business grew by more than 40 per cent here. Other international voice and data service providers such as BT and Verizon are also betting big on India. How does AT&T differentiate itself? AT&T India began commercial services in early 2007 with the capability of providing AT&T’s global customers who are operating in India with the same standard of communications services that they enjoy from AT&T elsewhere in the world. We and our partners in India will be able to help a host of companies achieve their business goals. And there may well be opportunities here for us beyond the business market, which we are anxious to explore. Would AT&T make any substantial investments to further grow this market? What areas would you be investing in and how much? AT&T has invested heavily to create a global IP-based network that’s widely regarded as unsurpassed in the market. And we continue investing, $750 million this year alone, to help keep it that way. We see more opportunity in markets such as India and around the world. We have an interest in pursuing opportunities as they become available. What innovations and technological advancements would you bring to customers here in India? You may know AT&T best as the elite business network company. That is a position we are working hard to maintain. We provide business services to 155 countries on six continents with more than 62,000 points of presence. We serve all of the US companies on Fortune 1000. Our network encompasses 5,39,000 fibre-route miles. We are extending the reach of our network around the world, with an emphasis on India. By year-end we will have 38 Internet data centres across the globe, and will be adding two additional nodes in India this year — deploying a second node in Mumbai and Bangalore, bringing the total to seven across the country. We’re also investing in new under sea cables that will help connect South-East Asia and North America while adding additional bandwidth to meet traffic growth from throughout the region. This will join the 14 existing under sea cable routes that the company uses to carry traffic between the Asia-Pacific region and North America. Would AT&T expand its offering from long distance services to other segments of Indian telecom such as broadband, mobile? Would you go after the retail telecom market here in India? We got the licence last October to offer fixed-line services throughout India, and we are investing heavily. We have large business customers here; hopefully, as we scale, we will see where that goes; it could go right down the market (to smaller customers). Right now, the focus is on the business side. If you look at our history, we start in one place and use that to grow and expand in all segments of the market. Our artery is fixed-line services, we will see where it takes us. What are the big trends that are changing enterprise communication? We are experiencing a resurgence in the telecom industry that promises even more powerful products and services for consumers in the twenty first century. The reason for that optimism can be found in three developing trends where technology is allowing companies to transform their businesses: Migration from fixed services to wireless, which is the foundation for genuine mobility; The move to Internet Protocol or IP networks and the services they enable is the second trend we are seeing; And the growing globalisation of the world economies and the increasing need to stay connected, across the street or across the world, is the third. More Stories on : Interview | Telecommunications
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