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What is the single biggest challenge before Tata Communications today?

During the past year, we witnessed an unprecedented slowdown of the global economy with most of the developed markets slipping into recession. The impact on developing markets like India and China was less severe, but even these highgrowth markets experienced slower growth rates last year. The reduction in consumer confidence and business spending created a challenging environment for all businesses operating worldwide. Interestingly, however, the communications sector continued to grow and perform reasonably well even during these times. We are pursuing aggressive growth and profitability targets in all our business segments.In the current environment, the challenge is to deliver more for less.

How has Tata Communications performed over the past one year in terms of market share and what has been the company's strategy so far?

Tata Communications has grown in all its business segments, with strong volume growth and higher revenues and profits. We are amongst the largest owners and operators of submarine cable networks globally. We are among the world's largest players in wholesale international voice services. Our IP network is amongst the top 10 Tier-1 networks in the world. We are the leader in the Indian enterprise data services market.

We continue to invest in the expansion of our submarine cable, IP/MPLS and Ethernet networks, and to partner with other players to create new connectivity options in new markets.

What level of investments are you looking at over the next few years? Which segments are likely to get more investments and why?

We expect to invest around Rs 100 billion across various segments and markets over three years. A large portion of this would go towards our submarine cable systems and data centre expansion globally. We also have aggressive plans to expand our broadband services in India through WiMax. Besides, there is a major focus on enhancing our managed services portfolio, which currently includes hosting, collaboration (telepresence and other conferencing solutions), security and hosted applications (like hosted contact centres).

What is Tata Communications' biggest strength and which are the areas that need to be strengthened?

Tata Communications' biggest strength is its extensive global infrastructure that includes one of the largest submarine cable networks and Tier-1 IP networks. Our 1 million square feet co-location and data centre space as well as our extensive MPLS and Ethernet network add to that infrastructure. We also leverage our strong integrated wholesale play that is helping carriers and service providers transform how they manage their business, with interesting outsourced and managed services models.

We have, over the past two years, created a portfolio of managed services that have been well accepted amongst our customers. We need to expand this portfolio as well as accelerate our capability building in this space so that we can compete with the larger global carriers that have been in this space for much longer.

What growth trends do you foresee and which segments are likely to do better?

The global economic conditions have thrown up new opportunities that the company is tapping aggressively. On the wholesale side, many major carriers are looking to reduce costs and improve efficiencies.

We are offering managed networks and network operations to our customers by leveraging our scale and capabilities. This is resulting in not only immediate cost reduction but also overall service quality improvements for our partners.

In the enterprise space, we see increased interest amongst multinationals to expand their presence in emerging markets of Asia, the Middle East and Africa. "Our business model, perhaps different from that of other Indian operators, is focused on delivering a new world of communications to our customers, mostly businesses worldwide, and consumers in select markets."

We are focused on helping our customers connect into these markets and are providing them various network and managed services in emerging markets.

Associated with this trend is the need for our customers to achieve more with less.

While containing costs, enterprises still seek to improve their collaboration with stakeholders and service offerings to their customers. In addition, as IT and networks become core to business operations, there is a need to secure the infrastructure from ever-growing, malicious threats. Enterprises are increasingly adopting managed services such as hosting, messaging, security and telepresence to achieve their objectives without having to make large investments in infrastructure and capabilities themselves.

In the Indian consumer market, the growth of broadband subscribers has been slower than expected because of last mile connectivity issues. To counter this problem, we have expanded our consumer broadband wireless services using Wi-Max technology that now covers Bangalore, Delhi NCR, Chandigarh and Hyderabad. However, since spectrum remains limited, further expansion across the country will become possible only after the government auctions broadband wireless access spectrum.

What is your view on the government's role in expediting broadband expansion into rural India?

We are very confident about the potential of broadband in India and believe that the impact that it can have on both businesses and individuals is just beginning to be tapped. We are very positive about the role that broadband can play in the country in delivering critical services like healthcare and education to rural markets. There are, of course, challenges regarding the last mile and PC penetration. The first step towards this would be to make available wireless spectrum, which is critical to enable the rollout of broadband services.

What concerns do you foresee as you extend your presence in India?

The growth and opportunities in the Indian market obviously outweigh any concerns that operators might have. At the same time, the industry would benefit from policies that are clear and consistent. Large investments still need to be made in India to expand networks, both wireline and wireless –­ having clarity on policy roadmaps and implementing them without major mid-course deviations would be paramount to investors. In addition, technology changes rapidly and our policies need to foresee such changes and create flexibility so that customers can get the benefits of better services and costs immediately without having to wait for policies to react to technology changes.

Where does Tata Communications stand vis-A -vis its competitors?

Tata Communications has leadership in many of its market segments, both in India and globally. Our business model, perhaps different from that of other Indian operators, is focused on delivering a new world of communications to our customers, mostly businesses worldwide, and consumers in select markets like India and South Africa.

What are the company's expansion plans in the international markets?

Tata Communications already has a very large presence globally, with a majority of its revenues coming from international operations. We will continue to expand our infrastructure, services and marketing capabilities in all our key markets in North America, Europe, Africa and Asia.

We are strengthening our presence in select emerging markets: we are a strategic partner at Neotel, the first converged services operator in South Africa, and we are in the process of entering into a JV in China. We have an ongoing evaluation of opportunities in other emerging markets and will seek to expand in some of them at the appropriate time.