Power Grid Corp of India Ltd (PGCIL) plans to invest Rs 1,200 crore over the next three years in its telecom business.
Power Grid Corp of India Ltd (PGCIL) plans to invest Rs 1,200 crore over the next three years in its telecom business. The government-owned power transmission company is in talks with a couple of television channels for providing its network for video streaming facilities.
TK Wali, general manager-in charge (telecom), PGCIL, said, “We are in advanced stages of negotiations with several television companies in the country and things will be finalised in a few months.” He did not disclose the names of the companies PGCIL is talking to.
Wali said the company will be providing its fibre-optic network mounted over its overhead transmission network to provide the
required bandwidth to television companies to air their video content.
PGCIL, which diversified into the telecom sector three years ago, currently offers end-to-end leasing of bandwidth to telecom operators, through its overhead transmission infrastructure. It currently has a fibre-optic network length of 20,000 km and will take it up another 5,000 km by the end of the next financial year.
By the end of the XIth Plan period (2012), the company is likely to have a network length of close to 30,000 km.
The current value of its telecom assets stands at Rs 1,000 crore.
PGCIL connects 128 cities in India including some remote areas in Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and the Northeast such as Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura with 80% of these are overhead cables mounted on the company’s existing power transmission towers.
“We are looking at further upgrading our capacity and the network length by the end of the XIth five year plan period. This will help us offer services such as mobile telephony and video streaming,” Wali said.
The company’s official website said it has been granted the infrastructure provider-I (IP-I) and internet service provider category-A (ISP-A) licenses.
In July 2006, Power Grid also acquired a national long distance (NLD) license which allows it to offer services to non-licensed service providers such as entities in the corporate, government and defence sectors.
Since 2006, it has added customers such as the Indian Army, the Intelligence Bureau, Central Reserve Police Force, National Informatics Centre, Infosys Technologies and Ericsson India.
Currently, it is also offering its network to telecom service providers such as Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Tata-owned Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL), Tata Teleservices, Reliance Communications and Bharti Airtel.
Shankar K and Abhishek Bhandari, power analysts with brokerage house Edelweiss, in a March 2 report, said, “PGCIL is planning to scale up its services from being a carrier’s carrier to value-added service offerings. These would be in the form of setting up multi protocol level switching (MPLS) and next generation network (NGN) which will enable switching between various telecom service providers and setting up of data centres.”
Wali said with increasing demand and competition, more and more players are getting into offering telecom services. “We are targeting these new breed of customers too. We will also be offering some additional value-added services as well,” he added.
For the current year, the company has a revenue target of Rs 150 crore from telecom services and by March 2012, plans to take it up to Rs 500-600 crore, Wali said.
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