Country has over 15 crore mobile phones

New Delhi, Mar 15 (UNI) The number of mobile telephones has gone up from 13.30 million in 2002-2003 to 156.40 million by January this year, taking the overall teledensity of the country to 17.45 per cent.

However, the rural teledensity was very low at 1.86 per cent.

In a written reply today to the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Communication and Information Technology Shakeel Ahmad also said the BSNL planned to extend its coverage to villages with a population of 1000.

BSNL has also entered into an agreement with DOT(Universal Service Obligation Fund) to provide Rural Household Dels(Direct Exchange Lines) in 1,267 specified areas.

Besides it was also deploying WLL network in rural areas to meet the demand of telephone connections beyond 5.0 km where telephone connection was not possble on landline, he said.

Speed Post: The Speed Post enjoys a market of 27.55 per cent in the organised Express industry.

The service was extended to 18 more towns in the national network on January one and to 25 more towns on March three, Dr Ahmad said replying to another question.

The network is extended as needed taking into account the market requirements, customer needs, expected business, transport facilities available, he said.

Software exports:Services and Software exports contributed 31.3 billion US dollars last financial year, according to NASSCOM figures, he said.

Computer software and related services export was expected to exceed 60 US billion dollars by 2010, as per the estimate given by the Electronics and Computer Software Export Promotion Council, said the Minister.

UNI