By Pacnet Press Release

NEW DEHLI - Pacnet today announced that it has increased its stake in its India joint venture and will shortly file applications for International Long Distance (ILD) and National Long Distance (NLD) licenses.

“As part of our strategy to aggressively grow our operations in India, we have raised our stake in our India joint venture Pacific Internet India Pvt. Ltd. from 55 percent to 74 percent,” said Bill Barney, Chief Executive Officer of Pacnet. “Together with our joint venture partner FutureWorld India Pvt. Ltd., we have further capitalised Pacific Internet India Pvt. Ltd to support our network roll out in India post receipt of ILD and NLD licenses.”

“Pacnet recently received approval from the Foreign Investment Promotion Board of India to increase its shareholding in the joint venture and to apply for ILD and NLD licenses. We look forward to obtaining the Letter of Intent from the Department of Telecom of India in the near future,” he added.

Upon approval of the necessary licenses, Pacnet will offer its full suite of industry-leading network services including International Private Line (IPL), IP VPN, Ethernet IPL, IP Transit, Direct Internet Access, as well as state-of-the-art managed services. Pacnet's managed services include its recently launched Media Delivery Service that enables enterprises to effectively distribute digital media around the world without investing in a costly high-bandwidth infrastructure, as well as its Pacnet Application Acceleration Service which enables organizations to speed up their applications across their networks.

Pacnet currently offers Internet services in six Indian cities including Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, Gurgaon and Hyderabad. “We will be enhancing the capability of our existing facilities significantly to support multiple IP services, as well as work with our partners in India to ensure pan-India coverage,” said Mr Barney.

Through the company's enhanced presence across India, enterprises can leverage Pacnet's next-generation network to facilitate the growth of both their domestic and international operations.  Businesses in India will also be able to better leverage Pacnet's wholly-owned state-of-the-art regional subsea cable system EAC-C2C, which is accessible to India via our network partners.

According to Mr Barney, “India will remain one of the world's fastest growing markets and the country will continue to be resilient despite the current global economic slowdown. Therefore, Pacnet remains committed to grow our operations here.”

The Indian government has forecast the growth for the current fiscal year ending 31 March 2009 to hit 7.1 per cent, down from 9 per cent in the previous year.

In line with the expanding economy, India's demand for bandwidth is also forecast to grow and latest figures from research firm TeleGeography has forecast bandwidth demand in India to grow from 157,041 Mbps in 2009 to 1,344,141 Mbps in 2014.

 

“This supports our strategy to focus on India as one of our key countries to invest aggressively in 2009, as we will continue to tap the continued economic strength of India, and support the country's demand for added network connectivity,” Mr Barney added.