The MTNL board has given the go-ahead to a proposal for setting up a separate subsidiary for providing Internet services. "The subsidiary will ultimately be hived off into a separate company," Rajagopalan said. He added that MTNL was not keen on entering into a partnership at the moment.

"As of now we have no plans for taking on an equity partner on board but this is something we will decide on later. Right now, only the idea of a strategic partner for providing special inputs is being explored," he added.

A decision on this is expected soon, with the company evaluating the consumers response to the free soft launch till February 9, the datefrom which users will have to start paying up.

The National Institute for Information Technology has already made a presentation to MTNL on various aspects of content upgradation and value additions like conducting on-line tests.

The board has also given approval for ordering more equipment to expand the infrastructure already in place. The equipment for expanding the service from the present 5,000 to 20,000 subscribers shall be available in position after commissioning in three months time. MTNL has put in place equipment worth Rs 2.5 crore, being supplied by Digital Equipment India Ltd. The systems include Compaq Aplha servers powered by the world's fastest 64-bit Alpha CPU running at 533 Mhz, with back to back servers at two locations.

Noted computer manufacturer Compaq has been roped in for setting up and managing the entire infrastructure for the service. Compaq has been entrusted with the responsibility of registering MTNL as an ISP with the appropriate authority and also register an IPaddress.

The company will also register the domain name of the service and design the network architecture for the MTNL points of presence (PoP's) at Delhi and Mumbai.

This will involve the IP address allocation for servers, routers as well as the DNS allocation for servers. In addition, Compaq is to ensure the physical connectivity of the LAN components in both cities by configuring the switches, routers and access servers.

The Internet Alpha server system software will provide all Internet-based services like E-mail, Pop 3, WWW, I-map 4, Proxy s/w and radius for security and authentication. The networking components are of CISCO make and provide 480 ports at each location.

The company has also been asked to set up billing and complaints system, network management station, Helpdesk PCs and complete integration testing and also undertake the customer acceptance test procedure.

MTNL is also setting up an Internet customer service centre, manned by technical personnel who will advise customers onapplying for connection and obtaining the codes etc. Complete information regarding the compatible modems and a guide book for accessing internet shall be provided soon. The internet access for dial up customers for both Delhi and Mumbai is 172230 and for ISDN customers the access code for Delhi is 4694444 and for Mumbai is 4339696.