Rank 31: DishnetDSL: Looking Up

DishnetDSL Ltd (DDSL), a Sterling subsidiary providing Internet services, put
significant impetus on DSL. It added 230 points of presence, creating a total
capacity for 23,000 connects. On the dial-up service front, it increased its
pre-paid subscriber base by 74 percent. In March 2002, the company had a total
subscriber base of 2.64 lakh and a DSL subscriber base of 20,000. Its revenues
grew by 100 percent to an estimated revenue of Rs 270 crore. Bulk of its
revenues came from DSL and value-added services only.

Beyond access, the company was aggressive on the value-added corporate
network services, such as Web hosting, co-location, and VPNs. Dishnet has
tie-ups with utility companies, railways, bus stations, educational
institutions, and civil supply shops, and has orders from the Southern Railways,
Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation, Delhi Civil Supplies Corporation,
and IOC. Today it has more than 130 hub centers across 55 odd cities. The
company feels the DSL broadband rollout would have been further high but for the
unbundling of the PSTN loop by the incumbent telecom service provider.

DishnetDSL TURNOVER FACTSHEET CEO : Vaidyanathan Srinivasan Year of Start-up :  1999 Area of Operation : Internet services Address : Sterling Tower, 327 Anna Salai, Teynampet, Chennai 600 016 Tel  : 044-4313001; Fax: 044-4316564 Web site : www.ddsl.net S W O T Strength  : Corporate base Weakness : DSL services available in few pockets Opportunity : Broadband services Threat  : Telcos looking at providing data services

Now with Internet telephony being allowed, DDSL believes that the ARPU per
hour would go up from the current Rs 5-10 to Rs 300-360. It has tied up a major
international carrier for providing Internet telephony.