Bangalore: Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL), India's premier provider of international telecommunications services and leading Internet Service Provider, announced on October 11 it will implement long distance services with ITXC Corp, one of the world's leading global wholesale voice carriers, an official press release said.

Through its connection to ITXC.net, VSNL will have access to ITXC's relationships with hundreds of carriers around the world, the release said.

"Together we look forward to delivering competitive, high quality voice services and growing call termination volume as we interconnect in this new way to carriers around the world," said S K Gupta, managing director.

"Clearly the announcement of a competitive thrust by VSNL, now part of the Tata group, is evidence of progress towards the government's goals of greater and more affordable access to telecommunications both in India and between India and the rest of the world," remarked chairman and CEO of ITXC, Tom Evslin.

With a population of 1 billion (second only to China), India represents a huge current and potential market despite its 4 per cent teledensity. In 2000, India had 527 million outgoing minutes and 2.2 billion incoming minutes according to telegeography 2002. Typically as telecommunications becomes competitive, prices decreases and that in turn stimulates the growth of traffic and teledensity by making phone calls affordable, the release added.

Minister of Communications, Pramod Mahajan, made a statement earlier in 2002 that he expects teledensity to increase to 7 per cent by 2005 stimulated by lower tariffs for domestic long distance as well as international long distance telephony.