FLAG comes under fire

VSNL, AT&T, Sprint, MCI blame FLAG for reneging on bandwidth allocations.

In separate letters to FLAG, the companies said the undersea cable network was selling additional capacity to Reliance Infocomm at their expense.

Reliance recently acquired FLAG for Rs 950 crore. In its letter, MCI said it faced a "severe business risk" and FLAG seemed to have "used us to serve its own business purpose".

VSNL, in its letter, said, "Such manipulative actions by FLAG are jeopardising international traffic between India and MCI and abuse monopolistic position. This is highly unbecoming of an international telecom facility provider that claims to be a neutral carrier's carrier."

When contacted, Reliance sources said they were not aware of the new developments.

VSNL pointed out that even in the case of AT&T, FLAG had failed to honour its agreement to provide 2 STM-1s (1 STM-1 offers 155 mbps bandwidth) between India and the UK.

"In the absence of the requested bandwidth capacity, AT&T and VSNL are not in a position to provide the much-desired diverse path between India and the US to their respective infotech customers," the company said in its note.

Reliance Infocomm had earlier accused VSNL of not releasing adequate bandwidth on FLAG, which prevented the latter from offering competitive prices.

Reliance had also approached the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India alleging that VSNL had released only 4 STM-1s on FLAG, though it had an agreement with the cable company for 12 STM-1s.

VSNL had responded by saying it was not aware of such an agreement and was therefore not obliged to release bandwidth to Reliance.