RCOM to focus on enterprise segment

BANGALORE: The telecom business for Reliance Communications will not just remain as a carrier of voice and data as it embarked on bringing as many applications and services on the wireless superhighway.

With a capex plans of $3.5 billion (Rs 14,000 crore) slated for FY08, Reliance Communications is giving a major thrust to its enterprise segment in bringing many more services and IT applications on its telecom network.

For starters, it has tied up with Cisco —$33 billion US technology giant— to deliver various internet related network services through its wireless infrastructure. Reliance Communications president & CEO (enterprise) Prakash Bajpai told ET that it is looking at extending similar technology alliances with other players to bring in more IT applications to enterprises especially the SMEs and high-usage premier individuals.

This could potentially mean that a software package like enterprise resource planning (ERP) will be available online to the SMBs on pay per use model. Further, Mr Bajpai said it has already started work on pilot basis to bring in many more mobile commerce applications and services onto its network.

Reliance Communications has already installed the backbone in terms of setting up the fibre optic cable spanning 60,000 km. Mr Bajpai said it is already connected to 300 business districts across top 40 cities in the country. It is already a major player in the data centre services have such four such units and is looking at adding another six.

For FY07, Reliance Communication registered consolidated revenue of Rs 15,468 crore with a net profit of Rs 3,163 crore with enterprise business accounting for over Rs 4,000 crore. It, currently, has over 30 million customers spreading across the segments of wireless, global and broadband.

Mr Bajpai said its newly-formed alliance with Cisco allows them to touch 6.8 lakh SMB customers. It has launched the Reliance Business Internet Services which looks at encouraging IT adoption by SMEs by reducing the high entry costs. The services being offered will be like high-speed broadband access, anti-virus suite, e-mail package, domain name services, firewall among others.