BT enters Indian telecom mkt with Jubilant Enpro

New Delhi, Nov 13 (UNI) UK's British Telecom Plc today announced its plans to step in the lucrative Indian telecom market as it entered into a 74:26 joint venture with New Delhi-based Jubilant Enpro Pvt Ltd besides applying for long distance and international long distances licenses.

The joint venture, BT Telecom India Pvt Ltd, will offer domestic and international end-to-end managed virtual private network-based services to corporate and multinational customers operating in India.

''The country's billion-plus-dollar telecom industry is growing at 14-18 per cent rate. We will invest a major portion in India, of the earlier announced 21 million dollar investment in the Asia Pacific region, to establish centres and infrastructure and scale up human resource. We aim to earn 250 million dollars in revenues by 2009 with this initiative,'' BT India's newly appointed Managing Director C S Rao told reporters here.

Jubilant Enpro, the services providing arm of Jubilant Organosys Group, dealing in pharmaceticals, food services, oil and gas and trading services, will be an active partner on the strategic side in the partnership.

The board of BT Telecom India will be headed by Jubilant Group Chairman rpt Chairman Shyam Bhartiya rpt Bhartiya and will also constitute two members from Enpro.

British Telecom will continue its agreement with its licensed partner Bharti Airtel through which it offers services in India.

''We will continue to work with Bharti and compete with them in some cases,'' Mr Rao added.

The company expects to receive the licences within eight to 12 weeks and launching the business by the end of first quarter of 2007. On being operational, BT India Telecom aims at providing a complete portfolio of global network services aimed at BPO and US/European MNCs in India using technologies such as ATM and internet protocol-based multi-protocol label switching (MPLS).

It will also add 6,000 people to its employee base within next two years. It employs over 15,000 people in Asia Pacific, of which about 60 per cent are engaged in India.

UNI CS PV PM1418