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Quality Is at the Forefront of the Buying Equation.

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VoicenData Bureau
New Update

How instrumental is online bandwidth trading for therapidly falling price of bandwidth?

It is not mere price erosion. Although price erosion is inevitable withfalling cost of New Networks and the competition for traffic, what is moreinteresting is the sorting of the quality of product–the emergence of anorder. And the emergence of something the Internet badly lacked–a mechanismwhereby investment in network and technical prowess in engineering are capableof being clearly differentiated in the market.

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Quality is right at the forefront of the buying equation.Household names are less relevant than quality of product when true comparisonis possible, right at the time of buying.

Don't these household names–mostly traditional carriers–seeyou as a threat?

Not at all. We are their best routes to the market in any deregulatedenvironment. We allow them to see opportunities that they wouldn't otherwisesee. Our proposition covers account management, marketing, network management,facilities management, risk management, and billing. The sales cycle has becomeless costly.

The carriers can, for the first time ever, see theirnetwork's quality and performance vis-à-vis their competitors’. Anyinvestment in network results in a quality change and that is what we monitor.Further, they can see the market pricing. Therefore, they do not need to pricelower than necessary.

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The charges that sellers have to incur when selling via ourexchange is substantially lower than the industry average of typical sales andgeneral administrative costs that Tier-1 sellers have to incur. This saving, wefeel, could serve better if utilized for network improvement.

How long will you have a viable business considering thatbandwidth price is dropping so sharply?

Band-X believes that the bit per second is the ultimate commodity in theworld. Quality of the bit is what is going to differentiate one network providerfrom the other, as the bit would carry data, voice, and video and on this have avariety of applications. The bit per second prices will continue a downwardtrend but will differentiate via our proprietary, patented and independentquality index and will use the quality indices to differentiate themselves onpricing. Application-based services will allow for differentiation as well. Onthe other hand, volumes will continue to grow as buyers and sellers wouldcontinue to prefer our model.

We have achieved leadership in this market, judged on anumber of criteria, turnover, profit, range of traded products, but we aren’tcomplacent.

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Unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury of time. We have anumber of advantages, not least of which is the strength of our investors. Andof course, our first-mover advantage.

Do you think Indian ISPs will turn to independentsatellite/submarine service providers in a big way for international bandwidth?

Given a choice and the facility to do so–and also bearing in mind the waysbusinesses have evolved in the West–the answer is yes.

Will it not affect their relation-ships with internationalcarriers who are their partners for other services?

Not really. The objective is to be profitable and have maximum redundancybuilt into the systems. There will be cases where conflicts could arise, but onehas be objective and focus on what the core competence need of the business is.

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We are already seeing their keenness to connect to Band-X toensure that they see the benefits as well as seek redundancy through ourexchange.

How much total IP traffic do you expect in India by theend of 2000?

I do not think that it would be appropriate to put a finger on the number,but by the look of the current buying consumption being realized it is well over1 Gig for international connectivity.

Shyamanuja Das

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