'The growth rate of IP and VPN is faster than that of Frame Relay'

How

has your performance been in India?

A. Global One has an excellent relationship with VSNL for the marketing of

managed data services and is considered to be the leader in this segment. In the

international calling card market, we have a high market share, as we have

tie-ups with Citibank, American Express, HSBC ICICI, Lufthansa and Air India.

Do you have plans to expand your services in India? If so, what are they?

A. We would like to continue our relationship with VSNL, as we are happy with

the services like X.25 and Frame Relay being offered in the country. But we are

also looking at expanding our network and looking for partners who have proven

strength in covering the corporate market and a nationwide reach.

We intend to increase our nodes in three additional cities by the second

quarter of the year 2001. The natural selection would be the next set of markets

like Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune. The partnership could be based on a

franchisee, reseller or joint venture model.

Could you tell us about the global IP and VPN products, and their market?

A. They are innovative products and are ideal for customers to communicate

internally and also externally with their suppliers. In terms of competition, we

have another product available in the market from Equant and we are planning to

merge with them in the next six months time. The growth rate of IP and VPN is

faster than that of Frame Relay and in the next five to six years, we can expect

the growth of IP and VPN outpacing the growth of Frame Relay.

Are you setting up web hosting services in India?

A. We provide web hosting services in Singapore and plan to set up web

hosting services in Hong Kong and Tokyo next month, and in Sydney the following

month. We are in the process of consolidating our web hosting strategy in India

and it will depend on the MNCs comfort in terms of having the host centers in

their own cities or across the oceans. Till date MNCs prefer to have web hosting

centers closer to them.

What is the market share you have in India?

A. In terms of the bandwidth utilization, we have forty percent of the market

share. If there had been more bandwidth in the country, our share would have

been much higher.

Pravin Prashant