``Intelligent network facilities in the Kalyan Telecom District (KTD) will have to wait till January 2000,'' revealed General Manager S Nithyanantham today while outlining the achievements of KTD in 1998-99 to the press on Friday.

``A top mandarin at DOT thought Kalyan was part of Thane district and hence comes under MTNL. However, we have now cleared the confusion and are pushing for all ISDN services to be provided as soon as possible," he said adding that the rates charged by the DOT would be on par with the VSNL rates. "Due to competiton DOT will have to lower its rates which are now higher than VSNL," he pointed out.

The KTD has commissioned four new exchanges with a netequipped capacity of 25,080 lines and earned a total revenue of Rs 151.61 crore (as against target of Rs 143 crore) along with undetaking computerisation in 27 exchanges, the GM said.

After Pune the KTD is largest telecom district in the state covering 9181.71 sq kms. Nithyantham lamented that the KTD also held a record for the lowest staff to the number of lines ratio. "As against the national stipulation of 20:1,000 we have a mere 8.6:1,000 resulting in an infrastructure manned by a staff too thinly spread," he said. He cited the example of remote areas under the Titwala exchange where some of the waiting lists date back to 1992. He stated that due to a freeze on recruitment announced by the DOT in 1983 the fast-growing KTD has been handicapped due to poor staff strength. "Moreover, we have been waiting for a year for equipment to install as many as 2.46 lakh lines. It is delays like this which create bottlenecks."

Touching upon the KTD's preparedness for the forthcoming monsoon, the GM assured, "Wehave taken all the necessary steps to prevent a situation like last year." The Kalyan exchange was inundated by water during the first monsoon showers last year leaving lakhs of phones dead for over a week.

On the multi-crore new KTD building (behind the Zone III DCP's office in Mahatma Phule chowk, Kalyan) he said, "We are waiting since the MSEB has still to provide us with a transformer for power." The four-storey structure with a glass and granite exterior is waiting to be declared open since last year but for the power supply.

There are 1,078 village public telephones in the KTD whose jurisdiction extends over a large rural area. Seventy per cent of these phones operate on solar energy because of infrequent or non-existent power supply in these remote villages where telephone is the only link with the outside world.