Orange Business ties up with Emery Tech

New Delhi: France Telecom, owned Orange Business Services has finalised a joint venture partnership with Emery Technologies an investment company owned by Moser Baer’s Managing Director, Mr Deepak Puri.

Emery will own 26 per cent stake in the new joint venture entity called Equant Network Services Pvt Ltd.

The joint venture will foray into the long distance telephony segment and has already got the Letter of Intent from the Department of Telecom for issuing a licence.

The move will enable Orange Business Services to go after the Indian enterprise communication services segment pegged at investment $4,000 million by 2010.

The company’s customers include various Indian and multinational companies which will now be able to deploy France Telecom’s internationally-certified network technologies such as: Asynchronous Transfer Mode, Frame Relay and Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) IP Virtual Private Network.

Mr Sanjay Vig, CEO, Orange Business, said “Our operations in India have seen a significant acceleration over the past one-year. Our network is supported by 10 points of presence (PoPs) directly managed by Orange Business Services. We have dual PoPs in Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and single PoPs facilitate traffic in Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Pune. We provide services to other towns and cities through extended local loops.”

On the foray into telecom services, Mr Puri said, “It is my personal investment and it has got nothing to do with Moser Baer.”

A representative of Emery said that Mr Puri was looking at various options to diversify and both telecom and Orange came across as a good investment opportunity.

Orange Business Services’ operations in India have seen a significant acceleration in the recent past.

After its acquisition of 2 IT services divisions of GTL last year, the company directly employs more than 1,600 people in India, serving over 680 Indian and multinational clients.

In addition, one of the three major service centers, supporting international customers of Orange Business Services is located in Gurgaon.

The company is not expected to foray into the retail long distance telephony segment.

France Telecom is one of the largest telecom service provider in Europe.

It had earlier exited from the Indian market after it sold out its stake in BPL Mobile. However, recently it had acquired GTL’s IT unit in a bid to enhance its offering in the country.