"VSNL will limit its equity risk to 15 percent to 20 per cent in the total capital investment of such ventures," Kumar said on his company's strategy for the country's just opened up global satellite telephone market.

VSNL has made a $150-million (Rs 600 crore) investment in ICO Global Communications thereby becoming the second largest shareholder in the company. With this, VSNL's investment has reached 7.98 per cent from the earlier 1.17 per cent level, Kumar said.

The nigam has made this investment, surpassing major foreign companies such as Satellite Phone Japan, Korea Telecom, Mexico Telecom and Greece and UAE telecom firms, since the country is expected to become an important market for ICO products and services.

Aimed at launching services within a year, ICO has signed an agreement withVSNL to set up satellite access node (SAN) at Chattarpur near Mehrauli. ICO will invest over $50 million in node to serve its global mobile communications in the region.

VSNL will benefit from the SAN by way of fees for handling traffic and charges from ICO for operating it.

VSNL had not invested directly in the Iridium India project which is expected to be launched by end of the year, Kumar said. However, the company has set up a gateway for routing the iridium traffic to 66 low earth orbit satellites at a cost of Rs 50 crore.

The gateway will ensure VSNL's monopoly in routing the iridium calls originating from and terminating in India and in neighbouring countries, he said. VSNL will look forward to investing in Afro-Asian Satellite Communications (asc), which plans to offer global satellite phone service in a couple of years. Although no equity has been picked up so far, an investment of Rs 45 crore is planned for setting up an international gateway for this system. Investments will be made in othercompanies such as Globalstar and Bharati satellite phone companies as and when they come out with clear-cut plans for operations in the country, he said.