Singapore Telecommunications Ltd (Singtel) and Bharti Airtel have joined hands to deliver high-speed secure data network coverage to Asia-Pacific, West Asia, Africa, Europe and the US.
They have combined resources into one network to provide high speed data connectivity to 325 cities across the world through 370 Points of Presence (PoP). This will form one of the largest Internet Protocol Virtual Private Networks (IP VPN) globally, Airtel said in a statement on Tuesday.
Together, Singtel’s 200 PoPs in 160 cities around the world and Airtel’s 170 plus PoPs in 165 cities across India, Africa and West Asia, will form a new network that offers a connectivity backbone to enterprises that spans several continents: Asia, Europe, Africa and North America, the company said.
“We believe joining forces this way makes total sense. By tapping on one another’s infrastructure assets we enhance each other’s capabilities,” Lim Seng Kong, Managing Director of Global Enterprise Business at Singtel Group Enterprise, said.
“With its wide coverage of cities in India, this network paves the way for our international customers to enter into one of the world’s most vibrant economies,” he said.
Businesses only need to deal with a single contract and customer helpdesk on the back of one network to manage their communications across multiple countries, he added.
Wider global reach “This association will enhance our value proposition for enterprise customers by offering them a wider global reach and the largest reach within India under a single platform. In particular, this will benefit companies in the pharmaceutical, IT and IT-enabled services as well as financial services segments, which are branching out to international locations rapidly,” Manish Prakash, Director for Strategic Ventures at Airtel, said.
Under this global network, multinational corporations can maintain their operations across different regions by using high-bandwidth business applications such as cloud applications, unified communications, video conferencing and software-defined networking solutions.
Furthermore, the network’s high performance Multi-Protocol Label Switching feature allows customers to enjoy seamless and fast data speeds.
The new network will ensure a consistent one-stop customer experience through a single helpdesk and an integrated Operations and Maintenance system jointly developed by the partners.
These systems are designed to boost troubleshooting capabilities across the networks and standardise service quality across many regions. Combining this unified customer service together with a very high network availability and reliability customers can have the assurance of operating over a stable network.
Through this partnership, Singtel also strengthens its lead as the largest IP VPN provider in Asia Pacific with strong domestic data network in Australia, India and Singapore, it added.