All eight satellite gateways of Mantra Online --the country's first multinational Internet service provider (ISP)--will be up and running by September end or early October, according Bharati BT International Ltd chief executive officer Mr Atul Kunwar. These gateways which would ultimately connect 27 cities across the country would have a total bandwidth of 150 mb.Briefing the media in Bangalore on Thursday, Mr Kunwar said by December, the company in association with its overseas partner would have invested over Rs 100 crore of which Rs 25 crore would be spent on setting up gateways.
Mantra Online has launched its second Ku-Band satellite gateway in Bangalore.
The first gateway was launched in New Delhi a few days ago. Other gateways in the offing are in Bhopal, Calcutta, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai and Pune.
He said once all the gateways were up, the company would introduce DSL and ASP facilities. The company had recently introduced ERP on the Net and WAP enabled content.
Mantra Online currently has an acquired dial-up subscriber base of 90,000 and 150 corporate users in seven cities.F Kunwar said the company in association with US-based SynTel was planning a submarine cable gateway between Chennai and Singapore. The project -- in which SynTel has stake in both Bharti Telecom and Bharti Ventures -- was estimated to cost around $150 million. From Singapore, the line would be connected to four other locations through Seemev Wee 3, Flag, Ace, he said.
Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.