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India
Telecom
October 3, 2002
New Skies-Data Access axis zeroes in on India
NEW DELHI -- New Skies Satellite and Data Access expect
to expand share of the Indian international long-distance
voice, data and video markets following their recent
$100-million dollar agreement allowing the Indian telecom
company Data Access use of the satellite operator’s
new spacecraft the NSS-6 and the existing NSS-703.
New Skies CEO Dan Goldberg and Data Access’ managing
director Siddhartha Ray claimed at a press conference
in New Delhi that much depended upon the pace and quality
of deregulation occurring in the Indian market now.
New Skies expects to raise its share of the Indian market
and gain upto 2 per cent of its revenues from this country
by end of next year, Goldberg said. New Skies was spun
off from INTELSAT four years ago as an independent company
for providing satellite services in communication. Its
sixth satellite, the NSS-6 will be operational by November
and be commercial by January.
For Data Access, a joint venture telecom company of
Hong Kong based PCCW and New Delhi’s SPA Enterprises,
the expectation is that in the year 2002-03 October
to September period, the ILD voice operation revenues
would be of the order of $350 million. In the last two
operational months of its ILD license, it had already
bagged $20 million. Ray is focussing on the inbound
voice traffic that is ten times the outbound voice traffic.
His advantage is the switches he has already in key
telecom hubs like London, New York, San Francisco and
Hong Kong. New Skies’ Ku-band transponders would
help him take the India bound traffic from them to this
country efficiently with no downtime, unlike in an all-fiber
network.
Both New Skies and Data Access will benefit further
when DTH comes to India by next year. Data Access itself
is working out the DTH operator service. Goldberg says
that satellite transmission is most suited for video
service. "We are also talking to a couple of other
operators for DTH video service carriage," he added.
Contact:
New Skies Satellite
Tel: 91-11-6878790-2
Email: ehess@newskies.com
Web:
www.newskies.com
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