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STPI sinks Rs 500 million into Earth stations for ISPs

STPI director P K Narotra has said that the investment would be mainly made on Earth stations providing high bandwidth to private Internet service providers.

The Department of Telecommunications granted an ISP licence to STPI last week. STPI will provide international gateways to private ISPs and develop 20 smaller and secondary locations to offer alternative low-cost options to the software industry.

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Narotra says that the STPI would set up earth stations at Madras, Pune, Mysore, Manipal (Karnataka), Coimbatore, and Vizag.

The technology park has invested about Rs 500 million in Earth stations at NOIDA, Bangalaore, Hyderabad, Gandhinagar, Bhubaneshwar, Thiruvananthapuram, Mohali, Jaipur, and New Bombay.

Narotra said that STPI's turnover is likely to touch Rs 1 billion by 2000 and added that it has got a grant-in-aid of Rs 300 million from the central government.

"It will be the endeavour of STPI to contribute its mite in increasing the country's software exports to $50 billion by 2008 as suggested by the National Task Force," he added.

STPI's Earth stations are F-3/E-3 IBS type looking to Intelsat 64 degree IOR satellite.

Local access to international gateways at STPI centres is provided through point-to-multipoint multi-access radio or through point-to-point CDMA links as a solution to the local loop problem.

STPI's high-speed data communication services fulfilled the requirement of the software and information technology industry. "Datacomm, in fact, is the lifeline of the software exporters," Narotra says.

Though the Software Technology Parks of India has applied for an Internet service provider licence, it will not target the home segment but concentrate on providing services to corporations.

Software Technology Parks of India has emerged as a partner-in-progress of various ISPs, and will provide them with quality services like Internet gateway access or international private leased circuits from its various Earth stations, Narotra said.

STPI, which was the first commercial ISP since 1993, has so far been able to maintain uptime of 99.5 per cent, and has targeted a level of 99.9 per cent with various initiatives in the pipelines.

Software Technology Parks of India is positioning its countrywide network by upgrading technology with state-of-the-art ATM to provide cost-effective solutions to ISPs, Narotra said.

STPI has also introduced videoconferencing services for companies to hold review meetings, corporate meetings and training.

At Bangalore, the park operates a VSAT network for the close user group of education and research community in the country on behalf of ERNET Society, Department of Electronics.

The services provided through the VSAT network vary from the international private leased circuit of 64 KBPS to 2 MBPS, full Internet access, corporate network and full motion videoconferencing facility.

- Compiled from the Indian media

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