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Phone on demand by next year: Paswan

Telephones are likely to be made available on demand in the country by next year, Communications Minister Ram Vilas Paswan told the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.

Replying to supplementaries during the question hour, he said Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited hope to provide 8 million new connections in the country this year against the target of 5.8 million phones.

Stating that his ministry was making efforts to provide telephone on demand by 2002, he said last year the two departments installed 5 million phones against the target of 4.5 million phones.

Paswan said telephones services were now available in 80 per cent of the country.

The minister said to overcome the problem of frequent telephone faults in some areas, the government proposed to replace telephone mainlines connected by the weak 'paper wires' and other wires by optical fibre.

He said there were 2,50,000 kms of paper wires in the country and about 2,40,000 kms of these wires have already been replaced.

This year the government proposed to replace 1,26,000 kms of optical fibre, he said.

The minister also said about 97,000 telephones have been connected by the wireless in local loop technology and 11,000 more would be connected under the system soon.

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