No wait list from Mar '06: BSNL CMD

BSNL is gearing up to wipe out the waiting list in rural areas by March next year.

"Our aim is to wipe out the existing waiting list for rural areas by March 2006. We hope that 80% of the waiting list would get cleared by the end of the current financial year," A K Sinha, CMD of BSNL, said.

BSNL will also be setting up 24,794 rural community phones, which could be converted later into public tele-info centres (PTICS), he said.

The waiting list for BSNL phones in rural areas stands at 13.5 lakh. BSNL has already provided 1.24 crore rural telephones and 5.11 lakh village public telephones across the country.

Sinha said BSNL's broadband service Dataone, which would provide high speed data, voice and video transmission on broadband as an alternate for the sluggish dial-up mode, is ready for commercial launch.

"Our customers can look forward to enjoying facility of Internet access with Wi-Fi & Wi-Max forums across the country in 2005. To begin with, 15 cities have been identified for Wi-Fi. Work will be undertaken in five major cities on experimental basis for Wi-Max," Sinha said.