Telecom Lead India: SingTel Global India, a global communications major, is planning to add five more Point of Presence (POPs)
in the country in the next 1-2 years, said Donny Cheah, regional managing director (USA,
India, UAE), SingTel, in an interview with Telecom Lead.
At present SingTel has 7 POPs in India located in Pune, Mumbai,
Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Delhi, and Chennai.
With the new POPs, SingTel Global India is planning to tap
enterprise customers in cities like Jaipur, Chandigarh, etc. The exact
locations of the POPs are not revealed.
We know the Asian market in and out; we see a lot of Indian
companies expanding globally and SingTel is the first choice for them for
global connectivity,” said Arun Dagar, managing director, SingTel Global India.
India is a significant market for managed connectivity
services for SingTel, according to Cheah.
In India, the revenues from audio and video
conferencing put together are expected to reach the $86.4 million by 2016 i.e.
$16.8 million for video conferencing & $16.8 million for audio conferencing,
Frost & Sullivan said recently.
The market for audio and video conferencing in Asia-Pacific
has exhibited double digit YOY growth rate of 11.9 percent to reach the $402.9
million mark in value terms and it is expected to catapult to $770 million by
2016, according to the research agency.
SingTel Global will be looking at expansion in U.S and
Europe, said Cheah. We will be careful when we expand in U.S. and Europe. Our growth
in these markets will be in line with the growth of customers.”
In line with this growth, SingTel Global is planning to
increase manpower by 5-10 percent shortly, Cheah said. At present SingTel employs
12,000 ICT personnel globally.
Though SingTel Global does not have license in China, it is
increasing its manpower in the country significantly to tap emerging opportunities.
SingTel is looking at inorganic growth. The company is closely monitoring the market. Acquisition of major companies is one of the thrust areas for SingTel, according to Cheah.
SingTel has been active in the industry with a number of strategic
partnerships. These partnerships are expected to deliver relevant on-demand
solutions for them.
Recently SingTel tied-up with Symantec for security on
demand (web, email and end-point security services). SingTel has also partnered
with Arkadin for cloud conferencing solutions. Similar partnerships for various
cloud services are in place with names of repute like Cisco, Google, EMC,
SAP, Intuit & VMWare.
At present, the company has 150,000 business users
worldwide who subscribe to its cloud services. These managed services ride
on SingTel’s leading-edge managed connectivity i.e. highly reliable and
secure infrastructure owing to investments in submarine cables and
satellites.
Recently, SingTel
launched PowerON, a suite of
end-to-end cloud-based services available on demand sans any hefty costs and
complexities, allowing businesses to focus their resources on building and
sharpening their competitive edge. These services can reduce the operating cost
up to 73 percent.
SingTel
to set up 4 mobile innovation centers worldwide
In another recent announcement SingTel said it is setting up
four mobile technology innovation centers.
These new centers mark SingTel’s next push into the digital
content space currently dominated by world giants Google, Amazon and Facebook.
The centers are part of efforts to transform the largest telco in South-east
Asia into a technology provider.
