“The EIG will span over 9,000 miles and is set to be in full operation by end 2010”

With the ongoing deployment of the Europe India Gateway (EIG) cable system, Cable & Wireless will build capacity in India. Nick Lambert, Managing Director - Global Markets, Cable & Wireless Worldwide in conversation with Subhankar Kundu

Nick Lambert

Tell us about your experience to date in India.

We have observed consistent growth in India with outstanding performance locally. In the past two years, we have done extremely well. We have adopted two approaches in India—one that caters to the critical needs of the domestic market while the other provides operational services to the rest of the world.

With the $30 million investment that we have announced in our Indian Multi-Service Platform (MSP), we offer multiple levels of cable redundancy to ensure seamless business continuity. We are now investing nearly $50 mn in the Europe India Gateway (EIG), a new high-bandwidth, undersea cable system providing greater, more robust network capacity between Europe and India, to help global companies expand their operations. We thoroughly understand the country's business culture and regulatory environment. We were the first international telecom provider to launch IP-based solutions in India, and the country's first international carrier to receive BS7799 security certification and Cisco Gold Certification.

With 150+ customers in India, this is quite indicative that we are growing significantly in the country but we don't share country-specific revenues.

Looking at the unique needs of Indian customers, how have you positioned your products?

The infrastructure that we have set up in India has been designed to provide mission-critical services. C&W has obtained security clearances from the Government of India to deliver national long-distance (NLD) and international long-distance (ILD) services in India. It isn’t just another network; rather it’s a network to provide India-oriented services as well. That's our USP. The network and infrastructure that we provide is primarily designed for business-to-business companies. All the components of our service solution are managed end-to-end. Customers have a single point of contact for any service that they procure from C&W across the world.

Do the demands of customers in India and the APAC vary when compared to those from your clients in other parts of the globe?

IT/ITES companies in India are providing solutions for technologies such as cloud computing or virtualization and therefore their delivery centers have to be good enough to meet large demands. What's happening now is that customers are unwilling to keep redesigning their networks. If a customer gets an infrastructure from day one that can scale and do so at the right cost point, he wouldn’t have to think about the asset cost and reengineering the network design at a later date. By eliminating the need for a router and terminating services into a Layer 3 switch, we are moving the termination point closer to the customer’s applications which improves performance.

Which are the verticals that C&W is eyeing in India?

The traditional segment that we have been working with in the last couple of years has been the IT/ITES segment. If you look at this vertical it is one of the key purchasers of telecom services. We already have 10 to 15 customers in the BPO segment and that’s our key focus area. Managed network services has been another area where we have been doing extremely well in design and integration, consultancy and off-shoring support to Indian and overseas companies. We are the market leaders in Hosted Contact Centers (HCCs) and provide network operations support services to around 3,000 global customers. Moreover, there is a huge investment that IT/ITES companies will be making over the next two-three years. There’s a need for scalable bandwidth because cloud computing and similar discussions are happening and virtualization is the most talked about technology. This will drive telecom companies to provide scalable networks and the only way to do that is through Ethernet-based technology.

We provide enterprise and carrier solutions with global connectivity including dedicated services, high quality managed security services and hosted services to the largest users of telecom services. Aviva, State Bank of India, Marks & Spencer India and Infineon are some of our biggest customers in India.

The $30 million investment in building a new MSP network in India will form our core backbone providing connectivity to our global network across the APAC, Europe and North America. The EIG, when it is complete, will span over 9,000 miles and is set to be in full operation by the end of 2010.

From the CoE perspective, about 4,500 customers are getting services from India. We are also increasing our workforce in India. We are currently a 400 plus strong company here.