V.S. Gopi Gopinath, Regional VP, AT&T Communication Services India

Armed with national and international long distance licences, a comprehensive product portfolio and seven nodes connecting key cities in the country, AT&T is looking to make a significant dent in the country's enterprise segment. In an interview with tele.net, V.S. Gopi Gopinath, regional vice-president, AT&T Communication Services India, discusses the company's corporate strategy and future plans. Excerpts...

India is one of our most strategic markets because many of our multinational customers have a significant, fast growing presence within and outside India and need global communications support. Effective November 2007, India became a separate region from the rest of Asia-Pacific for AT&T, in order to better meet the needs of multinational customers and to fully capitalise on the burgeoning demand for telecom services in the country. We have seven nodes in five cities (Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad) and plan to add three more nodes over the next year. We were the first foreign telecom operator to receive national long distance (NLD) and international long distance (ILD) licences in 2006. We were also the first player to become fully operational and provide services with these licences in 2007. We are ideally positioned not only to serve our international customers but also the growing number of Indian companies that are expanding globally. Our major India-based multinational customers include Tata Consultancy Services and Bank of India. Two of our subsidiaries, Sterling Commerce and USinternetworking, also have a strong and growing presence in the country.

How do you perceive the opportunities in the Indian long distance sector given the recent simplification of NLD and ILD norms? How will these licences benefit the company?

Given the recent simplification of long distance norms, our company, which is a joint venture between AT&T and Mahindra Telecommunications Investment Private Limited, will benefit enterprises across the country with our direct working relationship. The key advantages will be AT&T's ownership of end-to-end services and hence, the greater flexibility it has in offering new features and services; simplicity in negotiating, contracting, billing and service delivery; and improved customer service and support. Our services include a full set of corporate virtual private network (VPN) services, and associated network security applications. Beyond the initial VPN services, our strategy of expanding into new services and products is driven by customer needs and government regulations.

We have no major concerns for our business operations in India, especially with the liberalisation of licensing regulations for foreign operators. As a result, India is one of our fastest growing markets in Asia-Pacific and worldwide. We applaud the Indian government's progressive approach by allowing increased foreign participation in the telecom sector. This will bring more competition, improved quality and increased innovation, as well as more choice and flexibility for customers. We already have seven nodes in India and, based on rapidly growing demand from customers, we expect India to remain a strategic priority for AT&T in the long term.

AT&T has an unsurpassed set of networking resources and assets including a global backbone to help customers deliver and share information seamlessly. As a result, we offer businesses a single source of sophisticated communications with unprecedented reach, including local, national and global access, designed and managed to their specifications. IP-based networks can deliver significant advantages to businesses, including enhanced employee productivity, new operational efficiencies, increased network reliability and security, and lower network costs. We also offer access to a full suite of applications such as VPNs, voice over internet protocol (VOIP), hosting capabilities and advanced messaging and conferencing.

What is your current level of business in India? What are your future plans?

What new technologies and services can an Indian enterprise consumer expect from an international company like yours?

Enterprise customers can also expect the following from the company in the years to come:

New subsea fibre optic cable capacity between the UK and Asia-Pacific: AT&T and other major leaders of the global telecommunications industry recently signed a formal construction and maintenance agreement to build the Europe India Gateway cable system.This is the first direct, high bandwidth optic fibre submarine cable system from the UK to India, which will cost close to $700 million and will significantly enhance capacity and diversity between the countries of these regions.

Additional global network nodes and network-to-network interconnections to further extend the reach of AT&T's MPLS service footprint.

Increased global hosting capacity with an additional 180,000 square feet of space.

New hosting offers such as utility computing, server virtualisation, application acceleration and application performance management tools.

New services such as managed hosting and applications, unified communications, content management and content distribution networks.

AT&T recently announced global plans to deliver the industry's first, fully managed Cisco TelePresence solution that allows companies to connect to their customers, suppliers and partners worldwide. The TelePresence solution is planned to be rolled out in India in 2009.

Why should a large enterprise customer use your services vis-a -vis those of others?

AT&T is the industry leader in serving large business customers (including all of the Fortune 1000 companies) and millions of other businesses across six continents.We have one of the world's most powerful global backbone networks, which carries 14.5 petabytes of data traffic on an average business day. The AT&T global network includes more than 547,000 worldwide fibre route miles, and covers 97 per cent of the world's economy.

Aside from its physical assets, AT&T has the most experienced professionals in the industry supporting our customers on the ground with around 100 staff across our five key locations in India. We have a long history of serving the most demanding customers in the world and a culture of service and support with a team that is dedicated to excellence in everything we do.

How has the AT&T-BellSouth merger impacted your ability to serve customers?

The AT&T-BellSouth merger will speed the convergence of new products and services, as well as enable and facilitate continued innovation and competition in the communications and entertainment industries. The combined company now has greater resources-financial, technical, research and development, network and marketing-which will better serve business customers and accelerate the introduction of new products and services.

AT&T, BellSouth and Cingular have led in the development and deployment of many of the consumer communications services that we depend on today, including high speed internet and other wireless technologies. Moving forward, AT&T will focus on how to make these services work together and better for users.