"We also hope to provide telephone connections and Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD) facility in all the villages in the coming two years," Chief General Manager, Gujarat Circle, S K Gupta said.

Gupta told Express Newsline that DoT would provide 2.5 lakh new telephone connections to subscribers all over the State in the current financial year. "Of the total new telephone connections, 1.6 lakh connections will be provided in urban areas and the rest 90,000 will be provided in rural areas," Gupta added.

Pointing out that there were 1.7 lakh telephones in the waiting list, the CGM said the waiting list would be cleared by the end of the current financial year. "But despite this clearance, the number of telephone connections in the waiting list will again increase considering the 2.5 lakh new telephone connections DoT is planning to provide," he added.

Gupta revealed that DoT had set a target of providing 3,000 STD-PCOs all over the State during the current financial year. In its bid to enhance the capacity of telephone exchanges, DoT was planning to set up more new electronic telephone exchanges in the urban areas so that old crossbar exchanges could be phased out gradually.

Similarly, all the 128 line C-DoT exchanges in the rural areas will be converted into 256 line C-DoT exchanges. To ensure that the fault rate comes down, DoT was also planning to lay down 4,000-km Optical Fibre Cables (OFC) which, Gupta says, are reasonably foolproof. He also said that around 20 Consumer Service Centres would be set up all over the State in the current financial year.

To a query, Gupta said that the Intelligent Network (IN) facility which included Virtual Calling Card and free phone service facilities was likely to be introduced in Ahmedabad within this month. When asked whether the IN facility would be introduced elsewhere in Gujarat also, Gupta said that would depend on both the allotment by DoT and its (IN's) requirement by the business community.

About the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) which includes Video conferencing, High Speed G-4 fax, Gupta said the DoT had plans to provide ISDN facility in areas like Nadiad, Anand, Ankaleshwar, Jamnagar and Bhavnagar.

"The implementation aspect will depend up on the demand of ISDN which is mostly required by business community", Gupta said. "If we feel it is in demand in the said areas, we will provide the ISDN facility."