VSNL has become the first Indian public sector company to be listed on the NYSE. VSNL is the sole international telecommunications service provider and the largest Internet service provider (ISP) in the country.

"We decided to list our shares on the NYSE as part of our strategy to become a leading telecom service company in the international arena," said S K Gupta, CMD of VSNL, who rang the bell to begin trading on the bourse on Tuesday.

"It is a privilege for the NYSE to list one of the flagship companies in the Indian corporate sector and the first company from India's telecom sector," NYSE chairman and CEO Richard A Grasso said.

During trading, the stock touched a high of $11.125 and a low of $10.875. VSNL has converted its global depositary receipts (GDRs) into ADRs on a 1:1 ratio. Earlier, it had also become the first Indian public sector company to raise capital through GDRs in 1997.

The company joins other India Internet sector companies including Satyam Infoway and Rediff.com with its listing.

It was hardly a smooth India Independence Day for VSNL. Hackers claiming to be "people supporting the Kashmiri cause" inserted what they called "defacements" on VSNL's Web site.

Amitabh Kumar, VSNL's Director, Operations, said he had not received any complaints from users earlier in the day, but said he was asking his team to temporarily take the Web site offline to make investigations. He said it appeared not to be defacement so much as "redirection, where the user is directed automatically to another Web site."

"Our own content has not been tampered with. It cannot be called defacement," he said.

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The interruption screen inserted by the hackers, which appeared whenever one clicked on "Online Registration" or "Online Renewal" for VSNL Internet access, said: "This defacement is of the 'biggest ISP' in India, VSNL! We wish you a sad Independence Day."

Meanwhile, VSNL is expected to cross the half-million Internet subscriber threshold by the end of August.

According to the latest figures, VSNL has a registered subscriber base of 486,000 for the end of July 2000. Mumbai alone accounts for a little over 45 per cent of VSNL's total subscribers in the country.

Since the end of last year, VSNL's subscriber base has grown by 38 percent from 323,000 (December 1999) to 446,000 by the end of June 30, 2000.