As it readies itself for an overseas foray to provide broadband connectivity in neighbouring countries, RailTel, the telecom arm of Indian Railways, is strengthening its enterprise solutions operations to garner a larger share of business from government departments and PSUs.
The PSU is targeting 10% of the Rs 5,000-crore government sector enterprise solutions business in the first phase. At present, the company gets only 20% of its business from government departments.
?There?s a huge potential to grow for the company, especially in the government sector. There?s sufficient demand from PSUs and government departments that are looking for such services. Under the initiative, we are creating data centres at Secunderabad and Gurgaon so that we can provide data centre and disaster recovery services. Soon, we will also launch value-added services in the field of tel-presence, CDN and host of other network services,? said RK Bahuguna, managing director, RailTel.
RailTel is already the preferred back-up optical fibre cable provider for telecom operators and it gets around 60% of its business from telecom companies. A fortnight ago, the company had bid for a R80-crore-job for providing broadband network in Bangladesh and a R10-crore contract in Bhutan.
?We are open to such projects in other countries as well, but we are currently focusing on providing broadband connectivity to 36,000 gram panchayats of eight states and three union territories. We are also supporting Railways in providing network support for various train control, administration and commercial operations,? Bahuguna added. RailTel has also ventured into international ICT projects and is targeting such projects in SAARC countries.
