
Cornered! is a blog devoted, most of the time anyway, to telecommunications: local and global issues, technology, people and trends from the perspective of someone who's been reporting, analysing and commenting on the industry since the dark ages (BC - before competition). Sometimes serious, sometimes flippant, sometimes frivolous. Controversial, analytical, informative, amusing, but never boring; a vehicle for examinations of important issues and observations on my encounters and experiences in an industry where polarised views and hyperbole are the norm.
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Tata's dreams of global IT&T conquest
Cornered!
Tata's dreams of global IT&T conquest | Tata's dreams of global IT&T conquest |
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| by Stuart Corner | |
| Thursday, 14 February 2008 | |
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Page 1 of 2 Tata was founded in 1869 by the great grandfather of the current head, Ratan Tata. In 1909 he built India's first steelworks and in 1932 his cousin, JRD Tata, launched the country's first airline, now Air India. Summarising the company's more recent exploits on the global stage, Le Monde lists the acquisition of Tetley Tea in 2000 for $US530 million and of British Steel in 2001 when Tata paid £4.3 billion for its then owner, Anglo-Dutch Firm Corus. More recently, Le Monde said, Tata has been selected by Ford as the likely buyer of another couple of the UK's 20th century icons: Jaguar and Rover. These might seem like relatively small steps for a company bent on global conquest. Its communications assets are much more impressive than a couple of troubled UK car marques. Tata this week put these communications assets firmly in the spotlight announcing the formation of Tata Communications, a company listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol TCL. It brings together several existing Tata comms businesses: VSNL, VSNL International, Teleglobe, Tata Indicom Enterprise Business Unit (TIEBU) and CIPRIS. However what it really encompasses are the former international carries of Canada (Teleglobe) and India (VSNL) and the Tyco Global Network: a very extensive global submarine cable network built in the boom days of the late nineties and bought for a song when the industry went bad. Today Tata says "The Tata Global Network encompasses one of the most advanced and largest submarine cable networks, a Tier-1 IP network, connectivity to more than 200 countries across 300 PoPs, and more than one million square feet of data centre space." Tata Communications has offices in 80 cities in 40 countries worldwide, an a strategic investment in South African operator Neotel, which it says will provide the company with a strong anchor to build an African footprint. |
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