Mauritius is MTNL's new hunting ground

At a time when Reliance Infocomm and Tata Teleservices are slugging it out for a piece of the WLL-based limited mobility pie, state-owned Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd plans to take refuge in Mauritius.

With only a few avenues available for expanding operations in India, the public sector unit has bid for a licence to offer fixed-line and international long-distance services in Mauritius.

Narendra Sharma, chairman and managing dof MTNL told Business Standard: "We are looking at opportunities for generating additional revenue. We can put our expertise to good use in the international market."

While MTNL has joint venture operations in Nepal and Malawi, this is the first time the company is going on its own outside the country. It has already firmed up the amount to be invested.

Four other international operators have bid for the project. MTNL was earlier denied permission by the Centre to offer long-distance services in India.

The government also disallowed it from expanding its operations beyond Delhi and Mumbai because Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd was offering services elsewhere in the country. The drop in tariffs has put further pressure on MTNL's revenues.

In a bid to streamline its operations, MTNL has also split its operations in Delhi into two units. MTNL Delhi will now have two chief general managers instead of one. A similar arrangement has also been firmed up for the Mumbai circle.

MTNL has undertaken the restructuring even as the government is contemplating merging it with BSNL.

"Our objective is to strengthen sales and marketing of our products because we face competition from the private sector. We want to reach out to our customers with world class services at affordable prices," Sharma said.

He said dividing the operations would enable the workforce to come close to the consumers. "We are also retraining our workforce to be more sensitive to the customers' needs. For this purpose, we have hired Accenture."