Reliance, Tata vie for biggest bandwidth deal

The race between Reliance and the Tata group for supremacy on the global telecom turf has started once again, with the two companies bidding for German telecom major Deutsche Telekom AG's bandwidth contract "" the biggest such order till date.

Deutsche Telekom, which has a global retail broadband presence, is in advanced stages of negotiations to buy huge volumes of undersea bandwidth between the US and Europe for its broadband businesses.

The contract is for 150-200 GB of bandwidth, which is much more than the total international bandwidth consumed in India, sources close to the deal told Business Standard here today.

The deal is valued at "hundreds of millions of dollars" and the Indian companies are competing with global majors like Global Crossing (owned by SingTel) and Apollo (Cable & Wireless). Deutsche Telekom AG is the biggest telecommunications company in both Germany and the European Union.

Executives of the Indian companies declined to comment. According to an industry analyst, "The winner of this deal will get a major lead in the global arena."

The competition between Reliance and the Tata group has been on for quite sometime, with both of them earlier bidding to acquire submarine cable companies Flag Telecom, Tyco Global Network and Teleglobe. While Reliance beat Tata to Flag, the Tata group-owned VSNL managed to acquire Tyco and Teleglobe. The companies had also bid for VSNL, which was acquired by the Tata group.

Of late, the companies have also locked horns over access to cable landing station in India, with Reliance alleging that Tata company VSNL was refusing access to its own landing station in India. An international tribunal had ruled in favour of Reliance and asked VSNL to allow it access to the Indian landing station.