Expert View

April 18, 2003
The future lies in broadband

Geetanjali Wadhwa & Pradeep Chakraborty

NEW DELHI -- GailTel is the telecom services arm of GAIL, the largest gas transmission company with over 4,500km natural gas pipelines and over 1,250km long exclusive LPG pipeline in the country. Taking shape along GAIL's 5,750km-pipeline infrastructure is the country's largest optical fiber network (OFC). With over 4,000km of OFC already operational at 99.99 percent availability, GailTel offers unparalleled bandwidth for telecom service providers.

An OFC-based DWDM network will connect major cities in the northwest part of India such as Delhi, Mumbai, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, Meerut, Agra, etc. Convergence Plus met up with Prosenjit Sarkar, senior officer -- marketing, GAIL, at Convergence India 2003, to find out more about the company's plans. Excerpts from an interview:

Convergence Plus: Please tell us in detail about GailTel's network coverage.

Prosenjit Sarkar: GailTel is already selling its network services to companies such as Bharti Telesonic, Escotel, BPL Broadband, Shyam Telecom, VSNL, Aircel Digilink, Sunpharma, AirTel, and D2V in phase one. Commercial traffic in the network has commenced and presently we are providing services to two major operators in the northwestern part of the country. We have obtained category-A Internet service provider (ISP) license from Department of Telecom (DoT) as well as an IP2 license. As part of the Phase two network, GailTel plans to create an alternate route between Delhi and Mumbai, and expand the network toward Chandigarh in the north and to Hyderabad in the south. At the end of the Phase two project, GailTel's network will interconnect 73 cities in the northern, western and southern parts of the country. Segregated in to two parts, the phase two is likely to be over by January- March 2003.

CP: What initiatives are you taking in the field of IT?

PS: GAIL has consistently been considered as one of the prime IT user in the country. Majority of the offices of GAIL are connected through LAN and WAN using a communication network of earth stations, VSATs and terrestrial microwave communications systems, fiber optic-based communication systems and landlines. GailNet provides network to all the manned locations across GAIL to facilitate voice and data communications required for business applications, Internet, intranet and email services. GAIL has also established videoconferencing facilities through its OFC network between the corporate office and some of its project offices. GAIL's intranet is a significant communication initiative in the form of an internal Web site that provides information about the company and enables quick online access to rules and procedures and other information, thus facilitating and expediting internal decision making.

CP: You have alliances with several companies. How are those alliances helping you?

PS: Yes, we do have some alliances, such as Tata Power in Mumbai and Spectra in Delhi. Where we do not have a fiber network, we reach our customers through these alliances. We are in talks with Reach for an international alliance. We also do not have any tie-up in Bangalore; there might be some alliance in the years to come.

CP: What have been your recent success stories?

PS: GailTel has advanced with two major steps -- obtaining a category-A Internet service provider (ISP) license from the DoT for leasing bandwidth to the corporate sector for data communication, and signing a contract with Bharti Telesonic, for providing bandwidth on the Delhi-Mumbai route. Earlier, GailTel was providing bandwidth to Bharti Telesonic on the Delhi-Vijaipur route, and now Bharti's digital traffic is flowing on GailTel's Delhi-Mumbai route as well.

CP: Who are your present and projected customers?

PS: We provide bandwidth to the big corporates and the telecom operators for voice and data usage. As far as our performance is concerned, our customers such as VSNL, Data Access, Bharti, etc. speak for us.

CP: Why did you divert to fiber?

PS: The diversion of fiber is transmission of bandwidth, besides transmission of gas.

CP: What are your future plans?

PS: The future lies in broadband. We have a precise and an aggressive growth strategy for the expansion plan envisaging creation of 14,500km of DWDM network with an operational capacity of 10Gbps and an installed capacity of over 160Gbps on a single fiber. The capacity of the network is scalable upto 1.2Tbps. Next, we are looking to set up bandwidth exchange and data centers, with a timeline from 2003-2005.