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Spectranet went live with its services in September 2000 in New Delhi. With
an impressive sum of over Rs 400 crore invested till date, this company is among
the first few to have ventured into the broadband arena and has already laid
about 670 km of fiber optic network in the national capital region (NCR). It has
also started work in Bangalore and plans to cover 40 cities with a planned
investment of up to Rs 2,000 crore to be made by 2002. The project has the
backing of ICICI and the Punj Lloyd group, which has a holding of about 75% in
the company.
|
Fact Sheet |
| Start-up Year: 1995 CEO/MD: Uday Punj Management: Uday Punj, Atul Punj, Sachin Mehra Partners and Alliances: Lucent Technologies, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, Compaq, Motorola/GI, Kenan, Juniper Funding: Punj Lloyd, ICICI, Naresh Trehan, Madhu Trehan Products and Services: Cable TV, Internet TV, Broadband Internet access (Cable Internet), Pay channels, Dial-up service Address: 42, Okhla Industrial Estate Phase III, New Delhi Tel: 6200800 Fax: 6200805 Web site: www.spectranet.com Contact: Anoop Roy E-mail: aroy@punjlloyd.com |
With some fiber optic cables already in place, the company has started
services like VPN and leased lines for the corporates, and cable TV and Internet
over cable for the home segment. However, that’s just the beginning of the
market opportunities for the company. The next logical step is setting up data
centers. It has already set up a data center in Delhi and plans more in Haryana,
Punjab and Bangalore. Next on the agenda are value added services in the
application service provider (ASP) space.
Spectranet’s broadband services are complemented by its endeavor to be a
content provider through its portal wahindia.com, which houses news, views,
sports and entertainment material–a combination that can be a strong force in
the convergence era. The company has also launched a fortnightly magazine under
the Wahindia brand name. This is an attempt to establish a brick-and-mortar
presence to further strengthen its operations.
Although many industry experts are of the opinion that the country is not yet
ready for broadband, Spectranet appears confident about its future and wants to
gain the early-mover edge in this upcoming technology. Clearly, the service
comes with a potential to address the issue of internal bandwidth, which is one
of the biggest bottlenecks for the communication needs of the country. The
company also has plans to move into services like e-education, e-medicine,
e-governance and e-commerce. Surely, with the basic infrastructure in place, the
company promises be a sizzler in 2001. DQ