In 2005, you committed $1.1 billion over the next three years. What is being done with the investment?

Cisco has allocated more than $750 million towards R&D activities, training and development and expanding relationships with strategic partners in India.

Cisco Systems Capital has a $150 million fund to provide leasing and other financial solutions to Cisco's customers and partners. We have committed $100 million towards venture capital investments in high-growth, early stage companies based in India.

In addition, we continue to expand our customer support operations and plan to invest $100 million in growing technical services capabilities, spare parts depots and channel development.

Cisco has allocated $10 million towards products and services for rural connectivity and the development of a BSNL lab in Chennai.

Is your IP phone strategy making progress in India? What success have you achieved with "TelePresence", which you tout as the next big technology innovation?

We've set up a pilot facility through our global manufacturing partner Foxconn for the production of internet protocol (IP) phones in Chennai. We plan to adjust activity once we see the results.

The Enterprise IP Telephony market has been growing at a very strong pace for Cisco � already we have shipped in excess of 200,000 IP phones to India.

The growth is coming primarily from the IT services and BPO sector, followed by banking and financial services, logistics and manufacturing enterprises.

SMEs in the fast growing sectors of auto component manufacturing, retail and textiles are also finding an increased need to adopt advanced networking and telecommunication technologies such as VoIP (Internet telephony), IP-based video conferencing and Internet applications to stay competitive.

These industries are some of the strongest drivers behind the immense potential and growth for IP telephony and VoIP. The customer excitement around TelePresence has been dramatic, with each customer who views it being able to identify the ways it can transform their businesses. 

For some, TelePresence will change their support models, for others it will change their supply chain, and for others allow them to have increased contact with experts based around the world.

Given that India has more wireless phones than fixed ones, does the concept of 'fixed-mobile' convergence make sense?

Fixed mobile convergence (FMC) offers huge potential globally; and, in India, every major service provider is expected to commercially launch some form of converged communications in the next year.

Broadband penetration will to some extent shape the industry scenario. Convergence will rely heavily on flexible and versatile IP protocols that will allow service providers to provide services that interact with and use both fixed and cellular networks.

For India in particular, with the growth in wireless exceeding wireline subscriptions, FMC has the potential to reduce churn in wireline services by offering seamless connectivity.

Cisco talks about powering the connected home and the 'Connected Life'. How successful have your attempts been in implementing this in emerging markets, especially India?

Cisco is in a great position to deliver to the consumer the best 'connected home' experience. With our acquisition of Scientific Atlanta, we are covering both sides of the digital home - PCs and Wi-Fi on the one side and the DVR on the other.

Our strategy is pretty straight forward. Start with basic home networking products, offer VOIP to support triple play services, then build networked entertainment devices and services and perhaps add home monitoring and control over time. India is a key market for our consumer strategy.

What kind of progress is your company making in the areas of unified communication and collaboration?

We believe Unified Communications and networked Web 2.0 technologies will be the drivers of one of the biggest market transitions in a decade. Cisco identified the potential of IP Communications and convergence years ago, and today, we're industry leaders.

Our offerings in Unified Communications will focus on simplicity or ease-of-use, interoperability and an open architecture. We're also working collaboratively with Microsoft in order to support our customer needs.