Network carriers ride on data boom

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Thursday , March 27, 2008 at 2346 hrs business. As Arpita Pal Agrawal, associate director, PricewaterhouseCoopers, explains, “The enterprise segment is growing at over 20% per annum.” No wonder the attention of network carriers is focussed on this segment and the need to address requirements there seems to be paramount at this point of time for them. For instance, Reliance Globalcom’s $2 billion investment will go into expansion of its global Ethernet footprint, value-added services, data centres and submarine cable systems. “From nine data centres, we will take the tally to 14 in the next few years,” says Punit Garg, president, Reliance Globalcom.

Srinivasa Addepalli, senior vice-president, corporate strategy, Tata Communications, says, “Much of the investment that we have earmarked will go into enhancing our capabilities in data.” This, according to Adepalli, will involve data-centre expansion and rollout of managed services including value-added, hosted and customised solutions. In fact, managed service is something that network carriers are taking very seriously as the play in data increasingly moves to this area in the coming years. “That is where the action will be going forward,” says Swaroop of Bharti.

Managed services involve the delivery and management of network-based services, applications and equipment to enterprises and allied service providers. The prospects of this business are so exciting that Tata Communications is said to be eyeing acquisitions in the managed services space in both developing and developed markets to improve its capabilities and scale up quickly. Reliance and Bharti also have their sights on the business. As Garg of Reliance Globalcom says, “It is a new vertical for us. But we are focussing on it aggressively.”