Plans on the anvil include setting up engineering labs and an academy in the space it has already acquired at Gurgaon (near Delhi). The company also plans to expand its operations to another location in India, which it is still in the process of identifying, says Amol Patel, founder, vice-president, ConvergeLabs.

The company, which is headquartered in the Silicon Valley, also plans to open one office each in Europe and Asia, from where it can service clients located in those regions. "We are currently identifying locations in Europe and Asia," added Patel. The company also plans to hire more than 100 people for its Indian operations this year, going up to 350 people in two years.

ConvergeLabs also plans to set up a Dedicated Service Acceleration Center (DSAC) for existing service providers who want to roll out WAP networks, and Short Messaging Services (SMS), etc. "We will take care of service creation, rollout, and deployment for the telecom operators. We help telecom companies select the right technology, the right vendors, and the right equipment."According to Patel, while in the old economy, a telecom company would have done all these things themselves, in the new economy, companies like ConvergeLabs can start playing a big role in entire telecom delivery chain. "For operational efficiencies and time to market reasons, it is advisable for operators to out-source network operations," adds Patel.

The company plans to set up a Dedicated Technology and Operations Center (DTOC) for technology vendors, to test equipment and develop customsied mediation devices to facilitate inter-operability for systems integrations across different technologies sourced from different vendors. "We are focussing more on IP-centric networks," says Patel.

ConvergeLabs also plans to set up Network Operating Centers (NOC), for telecom service operations. The NOCs can take care of billing, provisioning (whereby the company remotely taps into the network to configure all the services that the customer wants), and load balancing for the telecom operator, who can use the spare time and resources to concentrate on the customer.

Meanwhile, Patel is hopeful that the ConvergeLab Academy, being set up in Gurgaon, should be up and running by November. The Academy will offer vocational courses on networks, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), broadband access, DWDM, MMDS, LMDS, etc. It will also impart hands-on training provisioning, deploying networks, troubleshooting, etc. The duration of the entire course will be 4 to 6 weeks. The courses will be targeted at telecom professionals with electronic engineering background.

"We will be targeting employees of equipment and technology vendors, telecom operators, as well as train people for internal absorption", said Patel.