Tata Communications bags voice outsourcing deal from BT

Internet and telecom major Tata Communications has bagged a voice services outsourcing contract from British Telecom (BT), spread over a five-year period. The financial details of the contract were not disclosed.

Analysts expect the deal to be around $300 million, based on the company's earnings of $1.2 billion for 24 billion minutes of traffic in the previous financial year.

"Under the contract, we will undertake all BT's voice applications across the world, except for a few markets in Europe. Apart from direct dial and termination services, we will also provide routing and switching services for BT," Tata Communications' Senior Vice-President (corporate strategy) Srinivas Addepalli told Business Standard.

"We expect to add another six billion minutes of traffic from the deal," he added.

For the financial year ended March 31, Tata Communications had recorded 24 billion minutes of traffic, accounting for $1.2 billion in revenues.

According to an analyst, who requested anonymity, if the realisations are in the same range of what the company got in the previous financial year, Tata Communications would be earning around $300 million.

Tata Communications will route BT's voice traffic over its global submarine cable and telecom network. On the other hand, Tata Communications will use BT's distribution channel for its international traffic into the UK. BT will also get access to Tata Communications' online management systems.