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Pacnet accelerates India expansion with national and international long-distance licences

Pacnet, through its joint venture Pacific Internet India (Pacnet India), has obtained national long distance (NLD) and international long distance (ILD) licenses from the Department of Telecommunications of India.

Through the new licenses, Pacnet India will expand its offerings to include international private line (IPL) and ethernet international private line (EIPL) services, as well as domestic and international IP virtual private network (VPN) services, designed to meet the country’s growing demand for high-bandwidth connectivity.

"We intend to expand our India operations aggressively this year and are already exploring adding more points of presence [PoPs] across the country in the coming months. We have also commenced upgrading our existing PoPs in India," said Bill Barney, CEO, Pacnet on Tuesday.

"With our enhanced reach and expanded suite of solutions, we will be able to provide businesses here with more diverse international network connectivity and introduce more cost-effective bandwidth solutions to the market," said Deepak Maira, Managing Director of Pacnet India and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) region.

Pacnet announced in December 2009 its plans to build the West Asia Crossing (WAC), a new submarine cable network that will provide direct connectivity between India and Asia, and help India meet its growing requirements for international bandwidth. WAC will have a design capacity of 6 to 8Tbps, and is expected to be ready for service in early 2012.

"The licenses will also allow us to establish our international gateway in Chennai, which is an integral part of our strategy for India," added Barney. "This gateway will allow us to link India through WAC, to our pan-Asia cable system EAC-C2C, and on to the US through EAC Pacific, on a single Pacnet network."

Pacnet India currently operates in six major cities across the country – Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad and Gurgaon.

(Source: AsiaNet)