AT&T Co seems to have scored a major coup in India with agreement on a joint venture with the giant Bombay soap-to-trucks conglomerate Tata Industries Pte Ltd, which will assemble its 5ESS digital telephone exchanges for the vast Indian market. AT&T Switching Systems (India) Pvt Ltd will be 51%-owned by AT&T – until last year’s liberalisation, anything more than 40% would probably not have been approved. The project is capitalised at about $35m, and the plant, to be sited in India’s high-tech capital, Bangalore, Karnataka state, is to be operational within a year. The 5ESS switch is capable of supporting both analogue and digital services of up to 135,000 lines, or 60,000 trunks. AT&T’s principal role will be to provide global switch manufacturing experience, techni cal knowhow and the production line equipment designed by Bell Labs.
