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Nortel to invest $ 350 mn for high performance Internet in India

North America-based Nortel Networks announced plans to invest $ 350 million for bringing high performance Internet to India.

Nortel is committed to unleashing India's businesses, Internet service providers and government organisations to develop a world-class optical Internet and wireless Internet infrastructure capable of making a significant contribution to the country's economic and social progress, said company's chief operating officer Clarence Chandran.

"We will invest in India's Internet infrastructure, grow its Internet workforce, stimulate technology export, and allocate a percentage of network bandwidth to educational and social initiatives."

Chandran will shortly visit India to meet top government officials and business leaders. He will be a keynote speaker at Bangalore IT.Com 2000.

Under the three-year plan, Nortel will work with local operators and allies to build next generation 10-gigabit optical networks to link major commerce centres. This will double today's backbone bandwidth with the potential to increase it 160-fold in the future. At present, Nortel Networks optical backbones carry 75 per cent of North America's Internet traffic and 50 per cent of Europe's.

According to Herschel Shosteck Associates, the company ranks first among major vendors for its next generation wireless communications infrastructure.

In India, the company has 1,500 professionals to carry out research and development activities. It plans to hire an additional 500 scientists and engineers, expand software development activities with its allies, and establish a centre of excellence with leading Indian universities. Nortel also plans to open an Internet knowledge centre to develop expertise in technologies, applications and professional services.

"The time is ripe for high-performance Internet to come to India -- both optical and wireless," Chandran said. "If India is to play a leading role in the global internet economy, the time to build tomorrow's infrastructure is now."

By year 2005, the number of Internet users in India is expected to grow from 6.1 million this year to over 62 million, cellular subscribers are forecast to reach 5.8 million and the Internet economy is expected to soar from $ 30 million to more than $ 9.3 billion.

The revenues of Nortel Networks totalled $ 21.3 billion last year.

UNI

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