Reliance, Bhartis, Vsnl Eye Hughes Subscribers For Nld

Three major national long distance telecom aspirants - Reliance Infocom, the Bharti group and Videsh Sanchar Nigam (VSNL) - have initiated preliminary talks with Hughes Tele.com India to offer their NLD service to Hughes' basic telephony users in Maharashtra and Goa.

Hughes Tele.com president and chief executive officer Prakash Bajpai said that talks are on with these companies to enter into an agreement. These players mainly want to offer long distance calls to our users.

At present, long distance calls are routed through the network of Bharat Sanchar Nigam.

"The timing of the finalisation of the agreement with the NLD operator will depend upon the roll out of their service. We are looking at offering quality services to our basic customers, while Hughes Tele.com needs better margins from the business by switching over to a private NLD player," he said.

Though all the three NLD operators are yet to begin their service, they desperately need Hughes Tele.com's customers mainly in the corporate segment. After Hughes' launch in Mumbai, it has emerged as one of the major basic telecom companies to bag a number of corporate customers. The other operator in the Mumbai metro is the state-run Mahanagar Telephone Nigam.

Since Mumbai is the major NLD market in the country, NLD operators' prime income is expected to come from this region. While Bharti group and VSNL officials confirmed the development, while top Reliance Infocom executives declined to comment.

Hughes Tele.com, which has a present customer-base of around 1 lakh, is planning to achieve two lakh users by March 2002. In order to increase the user-base Hughes is also developing new strategies for rural telephony. Hughes Tele.com will install village telephones in the areas where no telephone exist.

The company is expecting its total investment in the basic telephony project to touch Rs 3,800 crore by March 2004. Hughes will offer advanced intelligence network services like calling card services, premium rate services and freephone services in a phased manner.