Comsat Intl Plans To Make India Its Se Asia Hub

Comsat International, a wholly owned subsidiary of Comsat Corporation, is eyeing India as the hub of its south-east Asian operations.

Comsat International president and general manager, James J Welch, said: "It makes logical sense to have India as the hub for Asia-Pacific. That premise works if we are allowed to gain access to international optic-fibre connectivity."

This, according to him, depends the government's intention to increase the pace of the reforms related to laying of optic-fibre cables in the country.

Welsch said India is a much attractive market than China due to increasing Internet users and high rate of penetration.

 

He said the with the kind of prospective Internet users, India needs a bandwidth of 210 mb from the existing 1 mb.

He pointed out that Turkey, which too had a bandwidth capacity of 1 mb, developed it to 210 mb in a year.

On the Indian market, Welsch said he expected the growth to be much higher than the global growth rate of 13 per cent. "The future structure should be that principal cities and regional cities should be connected by optic fibre."

Though he declined to spell out the investment expected, he said Comsat will notch up a revenue of $100 million in the next 3-4 years.