The administrative cadre in the department would be rationalised so that it acquired expertise keeping in tune with the new requirements and challenges, the minister said inaugurating the 8,000 line C-DOT Max-Xl exchange at Yelahanka, on the city outskirts.

Stating that along with the upgradation of technology, change in administrative pattern was also necessary, he said the centre intended to delegate and rationalise powers at local levels to speed up the decision making process.

Referring to former union minister CK Jaffer Sharief's suggestion that the ban on recruitment in the department be lifted, he said the ministry would consider it.

He said there was need for attitudinal change to achieve the desired result. As the work culture had not changed much even afterliberalisation in 1991, encouraging results had not been achieved.

Accusing multinational companies (MNCs) of trying to fool the developing countries, Jagmohan said none of them was transferring real technologies and there was need for more indigenous efforts.

He said the disparity in income between developed and developing countries was widening. Even today, three billion people in the third world had no access to sanitation and 1.2 billion had no clean drinking water.

Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT) executive director KN Gupta said the number of lines produced by his organisation would touch one crore by march next. The technology was much better than the ones offered by many MNCs and it was being used in nearly 12 countries.

Karnataka telecom chief general manager MA Chowdappa said two lakh telephones would be added next year in the circle and it would generate an annual revenue of Rs 1,200 crore to put it in third position in the country.

The new exchange in the Bangalore telecomdistrict could be expanded up to 40,000 and would have facilities like integrated service digital network. It could handle eight lakh busy hour call attempts and would have special features like itemised billing, call waiting and call transfer.