Sanjiv Bhagat, Sales Center Vice President of AT&T India, says the company’s India expansion is on the right track to address demands of enterprises.
Recently, AT&T signed a deal with Bharti Airtel to expand its enterprise reach. AT&T, which rivals BT, Orange Business Services, SingTel, Verizon, etc. has already expanded its resource base in India. The deal with Bharti Airtel is one of the strategies to increase presence.
Sanjiv Bhagat, Sales Center Vice President of AT&T India, in an interview with Rajani Baburajan, spoke about the company’s focus areas in the country.
Please share more details about AT&T’s recent deal with Bharti Airtel to enhance presence in the Indian enterprise market?
AT&T and Bharti Airtel have signed a Network-to-Network Interconnect (NNI) agreement to allow AT&T customers to access more than 100 cities across India via Bharti Airtel’s more than 130 Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS)-enabled IP Network nodes. This lets multinational customers enjoy:
· End-to-end fully managed MPLS capabilities. It will offer AT&T services from wherever they work in India, from the first-tier cities covered by AT&T’s existing network to the nation’s key smaller cities and high-growth areas.
· A cost-effective, thorough and reliable network. Customers can also expand their global MPLS VPNs to locations across India.
· Consistent service performance across all sites and a single point of contact for service-level agreement (SLA) management.
· Easy contracting and billing.
Will you have similar arrangements with other operators in India or other foreign countries?
We will continue our strategy of entering new and emerging markets to support our global MNC customers wherever their business takes them. The NNI agreement with Bharti Airtel allows AT&T customers to access more than 100 cities across India via Bharti Airtel’s more than 130 Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS)-enabled IP Network nodes. Our goal remains enabling our global MNC customers to have access to consistent services with the same high standards of quality, reliability and security and a single point of contact for service-level agreement management.
How AT&T customers benefit from Airtel network in India. What is the nature of the agreement between AT&T and Airtel?
This lets multinational customers enjoy:
· End-to-end fully managed MPLS capabilities. It will offer AT&T services from wherever they work in India, from the first-tier cities covered by AT&T’s existing network to the nation’s key smaller cities and high-growth areas.
· A cost-effective, thorough and reliable network. Customers can also expand their global MPLS VPNs to locations across India.
· Consistent service performance across all sites and a single point of contact for service-level agreement (SLA) management.
· Easy contracting and billing.
Will AT&T reduce investments in India since it will be utilizing Airtel for its expansion in India?
We are not going to give in-country breakdown of investment number in specific country.
What are the focus areas of AT&T in India?
AT&T has had a presence in India for more than twenty five years. We established excellent relationships with domestic carriers and have a deep understanding of the Indian business environment. Being the first to receive the new ILD/NLD/ISP licenses in 2006 allowed us to expand our portfolio of services and work directly with customers on all aspects from contracting to delivery and implementation. It has provided better quality, reliability and service.
Our employee base grew to about 2,500-plus in 2013. We now have six offices in India, and serve around 400-plus global multinational customers in India. Revenues have grown in double-digit since we received the licenses in 2006.
We also opened an Internet Data Center in Bangalore in 2008, and invested in sub-sea cable infrastructure. We invested in more cable capacity between India and Europe (EIG cable) and rest of Asia (AAG). We also invested in TP rooms in AT&T offices – Bangalore (x4), Hyderabad (x2), Gurgaon (x1) and Pune (x1 – located in a TechM office in Hinjewadi).
With the NNI agreement with Bharti Airtel in place, we aim to be the “provider of choice” serving enterprises’ global needs for competitive, flexible and integrated wide area IP networking solutions that span the globe.
Which are the main verticals you target?
According to the latest issue of World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects 2013, India’s growth is expected to inch closer to that of China in near future. By 2015 the growth rate of India would be 7 percent. India continues to be a priority market for most of our global MNC customers.
Our customers among these companies have told us that enhanced communications services between India and the rest of the world is a key factor to helping them grow and be more competitive.
We provide global connectivity services and business applications solutions to multinational corporations in India. We expect India to remain a strategic priority for AT&T in the long term.
AT&T saw a pretty broad-based demand from different industries, including professional services, outsourcing and high-technology companies, financial firms and many others.
Rajani Baburajan
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