"Privatization will give us more flexibility. Earlier we had to operate in a very rigid structure. Among other things, this change would allow us to offer services at market rates."

Raju T Pulugurtha has been spearheading Intelsat’s business in India since
1993, as regional director for Asia Pacific sales and marketing. He spoke to
VOICE&DATA’s Ravi Shekhar Pandey in New Delhi.

Intelsat recenly completed its privatization process, transforming itself
from a treaty-based organization to a multinational corporate. How is this going
to affect its future operations?

Earlier 145 countries owned Intelsat. Now, there will be no owners but only
shareholders and the company will be run by a board of duly elected members.
Intelsat has three group companies–one owns the satellites, one looks after
operation and maintenance of satellites and one takes care of sales and
marketing. Privatization will give us more flexibility. Earlier we had to
operate in a very rigid structure. Among other things, this change would allow
us to offer services at market rates. We are also positioning ourselves to offer
our customers flexible packages including bundled network solutions. Besides, we
are also planning to raise money from the capital market.

Tell us about your current operations in India?

At present, India is being served by six Intelsat satellites. VSNL has forty
gateways on these satellites and STPI has fourteen. These are being used to
offer four kinds of services that include international voice telephony,
Internet backbone connectivity, broadcasting and corporate network solutions. In
a couple of years, we would be deploying four more satellites to serve India. Of
these, three would be replacement satellites and one would be a Ku-band
satellite. All this is a part of Intelsat’s ambitious plan to induct ten new
satellites in the next two years at a cost of $3 billion. In fact one of these
satellites was launched in June.

What would the size of your India operations in value terms, be?

In the calender year 2000, Intelsat earned a revenue of $ 48 million in
India, of a global revenue of $ 1.1 billion. In Asia, India is one of the two
emerging markets for us. The other is China. We expect the satellite braodband
market in India to reach $ 1.2 billion by 2015. And we will surely have a
significant share in that.