Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (MTNL) will soon provide integrated services digital network (ISDN) connections on demand. It will also clear the pending 500 connections in three months, company sources said.

ISDN facility, introduced in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Lucknow over a year ago, will also be launched shortly in other cities. These include Calcutta, Madras, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Ranchi and Hyderabad. MTNL, till now, has been able to provide only 75 connections in Mumbai due to shortage of network termination equipment. To overcome this, MTNL had requested consumers to purchase the equipment from the open market and said it would reimburse the costs later. The offer, however, did not find any takers.

"Being a public sector undertaking, MTNL had to follow certain procedures to procure the equipment," company officials said, adding that the entire tendering process is time-consuming. It has recently received fresh stocks of terminals to meet the demand. Big companies and institutions like Reliance Industries, Bombay Stock Exchange, National Stock Exchange and Tata Consultancy Services have placed orders for the product.

The system, widely used in the West, facilitates transmition of voice, data and image through telephone network. Besides the 64 KBPS data transfer facility, video conferences can also be carried out through the system. Other features include transmission of X-ray images through telephone lines, faster fax messages at a speed of 64 kbps, six times faster than the present mode.

It also provides calling line identification and a number of supplementary services for speech calls.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.