Hutchison set to turn Calcutta orange
Calcutta: Hutchison Telecommunications of Hong Kong, which controls the Orange service in Mumbai, is getting ready to set Calcutta's cellular skies aflame with an "orange" glow. They are poised to close, perhaps, the largest `all-cash deal' in Indian cellular history, as they near an agreement with the Jhawar-family controlled Usha Martin Telekom Limited (UMTL). UMTL, the cellular JV between the Rs 1,200-crore Usha Martin group and Telekom Malaysia, operates the city's Command mobile network, with a subscriber base of over 45,000.

According to informed sources, Hutchison Telecom is said to have agreed to acquire a 49 per cent stake in UMTL through its Indian cellular arm, Hutchison Max Telecom. The company is tipped to shell out a staggering $145-m (Rs 640 crore) to the shareholders of UMTL, based on a mutually-agreed enterprise valuation of the Command operation. The promoters of Hutchison Max and UMTL reportedly met in London to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU). Under the terms of the MoU, Hutchison Max Telecom will acquire 49 per cent, by buying out Telekom Malaysia's 37.71 per cent stake and the Mauritius-based venture capitalist Telecommunications Investment’s 11.29 per cent holding in UMTL.

The deal, when finalised, will give Hutchison a dominant three-metro cellular footprint encompassing Mumbai, Delhi and Calcutta, making it one of the most powerful cellular entities in India.

A high-level Hutchison team is said to have visited UMTL's Calcutta headquarters on Monday to meet the present executive management team. When contacted, UMTL managing director Arun Kapur declined to comment.

The agreement is to be signed after Hutchison Max and its legal advisors Kotak Mahindra complete the due-diligence, which is in the final stages.
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Maruti to fight back with two variants of Alto in June-July
New Delhi: Market leader, Maruti Udyog -- which has a 65 per cent share in the Indian passenger car market, has big plans to hit out at competition with the launch of its much-awaited Alto in June end or July beginning, soon after its planned annual plant shutdown this month.

The launch plans are in line with the MoU the company signed with the directorate general of foreign trade last August. At this time it had announced plans to launch three new models by May 2000 at an investment of Rs 1,200 crore. Two of them the Baleno and the Wagon R have already debuted in the Indian market. The Alto is expected to debut in two variants of 800 cc and 1000 cc. The Alto i will debut with more than 70 per cent local content.

The company also moved fast to scotch rumours that the launch of the Alto will be followed by a gradual phase-out of either the 800 or the Zen models. The new models will increase the products in the Maruti stable from the existing seven to eight.
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Enron plans IT backbone, call centres in B’lore
Bangalore: Joining a long list of industry biggies in the country, power giant Enron has announced the setting up of an information technology backbone in Bangalore.

Company officials are on record stating that the company is looking at three big projects in the state of Karnataka. The first two are related to Enron’s core strength area, namely power supply. Surplus power — after catering to Maharashtra — will be supplied to Karnataka from the Dabhol power plant. The company has also evinced interest in the Vijaynagar power project using LNG fuel, where it is one of the three shortlisted bidders.

The third proposal is venturing into IT enabled services, setting up call centres and a complete IT backbone in the state. This it plans to do so by using the power lines from Maharashtra to Karnataka to set up the high connectivity network for its IT ventures.

Other major players incude the Reliance group -- which envisages a ball-park investment of Rs 500 crore in laying a fibre optic cable network along 4,000 km of national and state highways over the next 18 months --, the BPL group -- whose venture looks at laying the cables in a Rs 400 crore two- stage exercise -- and Finolex Cables, which has pitched in with its American joint venture partner Luscent Technologies, for a Rs 100 crore project on similar lines.
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Govt plans to go in for strategic partner in CMC
New Delhi: The government which had, earlier, ruled out the possibility of strategic equity tie ups with any international IT companies as part of the disinvestment plans of CMC Limited, has, in a major shift from its earlier plans, decided to issue additional equity in the company to the public and offload its stake in the firm to a private strategic equity partner, which could be a foreign infotech company. The government, which is the largest shareholder in CMC with a 83.33 per cent stake, had said it would offload the shares to public.

However, as per the present plans of the government, the private equity partner will only have a minority stake in the state-owned enterprise, with the government continuing to hold a majority stake in CMC.

The government is repotedly in the process of giving the mandate to an agency to identify the partner.

In a move to harness global opportunities, the company had announced the creation of three separate marketing SBUs covering respectively the regions of the Middle East, south-east Asia and Europe, in addition to CMC’s wholly-owned subsidiary in the US.
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Intel may expand data centre business to India
Mumbai: International computer chip giant, Intel Corporation, which began its data centre business in July 1999 at Santa Clara, announced that it is likely to enter the data centre business in India by opening a data centre comprising a server farm of "hundreds" of servers. Unofficial sources state that the centre could be in Mumbai. The data centre business is part of its IntelOnline Services division.

While company officials were not willing to reveal the investment involved, it is understood that details would be announced in 60 to 90 days’ time. Intel has, reportedly, earmarked around $1 bn for data centres across the world and has spent around 16 to 17 per cent of this outlay.

The Indian centre would join the list of such centres the company has opened in Folsom, US, UK and Korea. Another one is being planned for Japan by June this year.

According to Intel officials, India is a crucial market as it will see tremendous growth in internet business in the coming years. There are 6.6m projected internet users in India with e-commerce transactions worth $1.38bn by 2003, according to research firm IDC. Intel officials feel these numbers will be easily exceeded with the `fast adoption of technology’ in India.
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Cable & Wireless completes first leg of IP network
London: British telecom giant, Cable and Wireless, announced on Wednesday it had completed the first phase of a $3.5 billion global internet protocol (IP) network. With the completion of this first phase the company has created a single, global high-capacity IP program, which has the capability to deliver integrated internet, data, voice and messaging communications.

The network announced in November last year, is to comprise of 85 international nodes. Of these, seven are now completed. These seven nodes connect to the US, so that the company can offer customers outside the US the same level of service as those within, in general and faster an more efficient local connectivity to the IP backbone, in particular.
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