The Videsh Sanchar Nigam will make a Rs 215 crore investment in additional bandwidth for its internet business. It proposes to acquire 155 mbps bandwidth immediately to add to its existing capacity of 165 mbps. The investment proposal has been approved by the VSNL board recently.

The public sector telecom company, which is currently the only provider of gateway facilities for internet services in India, will buy a "packet of 155 mbps" of bandwidth from SAFE, an international bandwidth provider with fibre optic cable connectivity spanning from Malaysia to the US. The SAFE cable passes through India.

VSNL is hard-pressed for bandwidth as the number of private internet service providers wanting international connectivity has been going up in the recent months. There are more than 30 such ISPs that have been availing of VSNL's gateway facility, and nearly 20 are in queue.

VSNL depends on cable bandwidth as its experience has shown that this is a more reliable and quicker mode of connectivity than satellite bandwidth. Cable-based connectivity has a delay factor not exceeding 200 milliseconds while satellite-based systems account for delays extending up to 500 milliseconds, says a VSNL official. Besides fibre optic cable-based gateways are better suited for real-time applications.

VSNL has recently acquired 45 mbps of bandwidth capacity on the FLAG cable, a service provider similar to SAFE. However, SAFE has geographical advantages as it originates from Malaysia, passes through a number of countries in East Asia, then India, touches the African continent and reaches Portugal. From here, the link to the US is through an undersea fibre optic cable.

SAFE has a total bandwidth of 5 gigabits. It provides bandwidth in block packets of 155 mbps.