Telstra makes much delayed foray into Indian telco market

Telstra's Indian joint venture, Telstra Telecommunications Private Limited has in short been awarded licences to provide clients in India with international and national long-distance telecommunications and Internet services, nevertheless is it now entering the market three years behind major global telcos like BT & AT&T.

In October 2008, Verizon Business announced an expansion of its presence in India through Verizon Business India, which it said was the trading name of a joint venture between it and the Videocon Group of Mumbai. Verizon Business held a 74 percent stake. Prior to this both BT and AT&T had announced very similar initiatives putting their equity in the Indian JVs at 74 percent.

In January 2010, the Indian Government rejected Telstra's plan to increase its shareholding in its Indian subsidiary saying that the move would have breached the ceiling on foreign shareholding. Telstra had submitted an application to increase its stake in Telstra Telecommunications Pvt Ltd, based in Mumbai, from 49 percent to 74 percent. Telstra had previously confirmed that it had lodged the application "to that end of formalising our presence in India."

Telstra Telecommunications - a joint venture with Microland - in a separate application lodged with India's Foreign Investment Review Board on 19 November 2009, he Indian Government rejected Telstra's plan using the ISP, NLD [National Long Distance] and ILD [International Long Distance] licenses to multinational enterprise clients."

Having now gained its licence, Telstra International says it will offer services at first in seven cities - Bangalore, Calcutta, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune - within the then and there six months, via international gateways in Mumbai and Chennai that will provide clients with direct routes into networks in Europe and Asia.

"As a result, Telstra will have greater control of service performance and customer experience, during providing enterprises with more comprehensive end-to-end managed services. Telstra will as well extend its industry standard service level agreements, offer higher levels of service monitoring, and help reduce risks with multi-level resiliency and redundancy in network design."

Tarek Robbiati, group managing director for Telstra International Group, said the licences would enable Telstra International to support the inflow of businesses setting up operations in India as so then as local companies expanding into emerging markets by giving them access to Telstra's connectivity in Asia and globally.

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