Tatas-owned Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited

Tatas-owned Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited plans to lay an undersea cable between India and Europe, covering about 10,000 km, at an investment of over $300 million.

Senior VSNL officials confirmed the plan and said that the company was expecting to have enough demand for bandwidth by 2008 and keeping this in mind VSNL has undertaken the major project.

Since the cost involved is huge, the company is also discussing with a few companies in West Asia to share the expenditure.

The partnership could be in any form -- the companies may take capacity and become financial partners, the officials said.

VSNL is in talks with Etisalat of United Arab Emirates and Saudi Telecom of Saudi Arabia, besides a few others in Southern Europe.

The cable is likely to be laid from Mumbai passing through Gulf and Egypt to France or Portugal.

The company is in the process of preparing a project report and by August/September the blue-print is expected to be ready, they added.

Asked about the source of funding, sources said it would be partially from internal accruals and rest depends upon the response from other partners.

VSNL is talking with the vendors about the costing to tie up finances, sources said.

Asked about the demand for undersea terabyte cable, VSNL officials said there would be enough demand for bandwidth in India itself as it has become a big destination for IT and enabled services.

VSNL, claiming to have a broadband subscriber base of over one lakh, said broadband is coming up in India in a big way and this alone would generate sufficient demand for bandwidth, they added.