BSNL and MTNL to jointly set up submarine cable lines

Kolkata, Jun 14 (UNI) The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and Mahanadi Telecom Nigam Limited (MTNL) would jointly set up submarine cable lines between India and Singapore and India and Abu Dhabi.

Stating this, BSNL Chairman-cum-Managing Director A K Sinha today said they had set up a joint venture company " Millennium Telecom " with MTNL for this purpose on 51-49 basis.

He said submarine cable network between India and Sri Lanka would be inaugurated this month, adding cable landing station would be Tuticorin in India and Colombo in Sri Lanka.

He said consultant had been apointed for techno-economic feasibility for execution of the project involving Rs 2000 crore.

To a question, he said BSNL has a capital expenditure of Rs 17,000 crore for this year on broadband expansion, mobile network, rural area setting up of billing infrastructire and development of CDMA equipment.

Mr Sinha also said there would be exchange of documents for nationwide UBI Multi Protocol Label Switching-Virtual Private Network (MPLS-VPN) network project, and added that 30 lakh IPTV broadband would be in market by March next year.

He said this could be used at home connecting television, adding charges for this facility were yet to be finalised and it would be combined with regular bills.

BSNL had targetted 300 towns in the country for this facility, he informed.

BSNL, UBI and HCL had tied up for a nationwide network to cover all the branches, he said.

The entire project would be completed in four phases over a period of three years, he said adding in the first phase 364 branches would be connected by September this year.

UNI KDG SJC/src1956