He said Secan, a fully protected self healing undersea ring, would offer a bandwidth of 7.68 tera bits per second, adding that the company had already entered into an agreement with Tycom Global Network (TGN) for interconnecting the Secan system with TGN's transpacific ring which would allow seamless flow of traffic between Chennai and the US. Mr Aravinthan said together with the TGN system, the Secan would ultimately span about 250,000 undersea km and link terrestrial networks on all the six continents.

He said its transpacific ring connecting Guam to the west coast of the US through Hawaii would commence operations by mid 2002. TNG had been given the turnkey contract for the laying and maintaining the cables, he said, adding that the tie up with TGN would enable Dishnet to provide broadband connectivity to all major countries in the world. Dishnet, he said, had already started pre-selling its projected bandwidth to leading ISPs and software houses even as Dishnet itself would be the major user of the facility for its ISP operations. Anticipating a tight competition especially as other submarine cable projects like that of Bharti's were also well on schedule, Dishnet was planning to repeat what it did in its cellular operations handled by AirCell which had made the billing of all calls barring Chennai on par with local calls. Mr Aravinthan said the company planned to sell broadband to the extent of 250 gbps to break even. Mr Aravinthan said with a view to creating necessary demand for the Secan bandwidth,the company was currently engaged in networking the whole of Tamil Nadu which would be followed by linking all major cities and towns in the country begining with south India. He said the project would be funded by both debt and equity. Dishnet officials also did not rule out Tycom Global Network taking stake in the company.