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Tele majors cagey of tie-ups with WorldCom

Surajeet Das Gupta

The Sunil Mittal-promoted Bharti Telesonic, which runs international long distance services, will demand additional safeguards from WorldCom in case it signs and agreement with the troubled US telecom major.

According to N Arjun, chief executive officer, Bharti Telesonic, "We have had negotiations with them but they have been slow to respond. We will now ask for additional safeguards to ensure that our payment will come on time which would include shorter settlement schedules. At the moment most of the settlements occur within a 60-90 days".

Data Access, part of a group which also is ready to launch ILD services, recently pulled out of negotiations with WorldCom after the company was not ready to offer guarantees on payments to the Indian ILD operator.

According to Siddharth Ray, managing director of the ILD company, "We decided to pull out of negotiations with WorldCom as we asked for collateral security to ensure that our payments were safe. But they were not ready to provide such guarantees."

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