What is VSNLs plan for national long-distance telephony?
Our plans will be put in place only after the final policy has been released by TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India). The government has now opened up NLD and anybody can enter this field by just paying a fee. There are no clear indications as to what the license fee will be. So it is a bit too early for us to spell out our strategy. Do you think players like AT&T and British Telecom will enter the national long distance telephony market? That is their speciality, but I cannot speculate on whether they would want to get into it in India or not. There are reports that the license fee could be around Rs 5 billion. What is your opinion on this? As I said, we have not yet been told anything on the fee issue. The market can be liberalised in different ways — you can allow simple leased-line resale or you may allow facility-based operators. If you are looking at leased-line resale, then Rs 5 billion is rather high. You could take a 2 mbps leased-line from DoT and pay Rs 2.2 million
