All the conversions would take place with immediate effect and no new shell accounts would be issued. Students who were being issued these shell accounts at a discounted rate of Rs 500 would now get TCP/IP accounts at the same price. The decision was taken at the board meeting held on May 27 in Delhi.

VSNL also introduced a 25-hour account at Rs 990 on the lines of what was announced by Satyam Infoway and Bharti earlier. It has increased its international bandwidth by 8 Mbps taking the total bandwidth to 110 Mbps. Over 20 ISPs have taken bandwidth from VSNL and the capacity is expected to touch 500 Mbps in the current year. The public sector ISP has witnessed a massive surge in Internet connections and its subscriber base currently exceeds 2,70,000, VSNL said in thestatement.