Wednesday, December 22 2004 20:33 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: Tata group owned Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL) has been accused of restricting access on Reliance group owned FLAG Europe Asia (FEA) cable, which is in direct violation of WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), according to CompTel/Ascent.

"VSNL's restrictions on access to submarine cable capacity violates India's general obligation to allow access and use of public telecommunications network under Article 5(a) of GATS Telecom Annex," CompTel/Ascent, a US-based association for monitoring restrictive trade practices in telecommunication sector, said in a report.

The Tata group company is one of the landing signatories of FLAG Telecom and it maintains and provides access to Indian companies on FEA Cable through its landing station in Mumbai.

The study, which was conducted following a request by United States Trade Representative (USTR) for comments regarding compliance with US telecommunications trade agreements, observed that "VSNL had failed to provide any access" over FEA cable.

"We are concerned particularly with VSNL's exercise of its monopoly control of FEA cable, which lands at its cable landing station serving Mumbai and other high technology centres where many MNCs are located," the report a copy of which is in possession of PTI, said.

When contacted VSNL sources said that "the question of artificial shortage of bandwidth doesn't arise as FLAG has declared its inability to sell capacity in the Indian market. As much as 17 STM-1s (over 2.5 GB) of bandwidth is available on FEA cable for several months now".