8 carriers to route BSNL overseas calls

Bharat Sanchar Nigam's international long distance calls for July will be carried by eight carriers including Bharti Infotel, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd, Reliance Communications Ltd, Tyco-Global (VSNL) and Australia's Optus.

BSNL runs its traffic on a least-cost routing basis offered by various international long distance service providers. For July, these companies and foreign operators Telecom Italia, Teleglobe Canada, France Telecom and Optus had provided their carriage cost bids.

Indian operators, who now control more than a third of the global undersea cable systems in the world with VSNL being among the top three carriers of originating traffic, took the majority chunk of BSNL's business.

Of the 50 designated routes such as the US, Canada, Brazil among others for the month of July, Reliance is carrying traffic on 14, while the VSNL, Tyco-Global and Tata Indicom together will router traffic to 22 destinations.

Bharti is carrying traffic to three locations, while BSNL will use its own links with neighbouring countries in the Saarc region (Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and Sri Lanka).

Incidentally, Bharti will carry traffic to the rest of the world route that primarily comprises Latin America and Africa. Tyco-Global Network, a subsidiary of VSNL, is the first choice to most Asian countries, sources told Business Standard.

Bharti Infotel and Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd already have India-Singapore cable through four cable systems in South East Asia, West Asia, Western Europe and Tata India Singapore Cable Systems. Bharti's ILD service provider, Bharti Infotel, is the preferred choice to countries where the traffic is less congested.

Reliance is the first choice for calls to popular countries like US, Canada and other countries, the second choice being VSNL.

For UK and most European countries, VSNL has emerged as the preferred supplier. Inmarsat (satellite communications traffic) will continue to be routed through Reliance as the first choice and VSNL as the second.

BSNL keeps a back-up for all routes and switches to the next available operator is quality or other issues emerge. It is working on setting up a full fledged international long distance carriage network and already has a license permitting it to do so.