Even as these fresh developments fructify, the management has decided to go in for its own gateway. Sources close to the company said, "It is best that we manage our own bandwidth."

The company will launch ISP services in Delhi and Bangalore to be followed by Hyderabad. On the anvil are plans to provide connectivity in parts of Orissa and Kochi.

The company had plans to introduce its services within Mumbai early in October 1999. However, "infrastructural bottlenecks" prevented the project from taking off.

Explaining the problem, sources said that MTNL's current policy allows ISPs only six digit numbers. More pertinently, these numbers are routed to a single exchange. As against this, conventional voice traffic on MTNL lines is made on seven digit numbers and has the luxury of seven tandem exchanges. So assuming for a moment that traffic is heavy, it can be re-routed to other exchanges and a seamless flow can be ensured.

For ISPs, however, access to a single exchange, translates into traffic overflowing. Minus the ability to re-route it to other exchanges, the outcome is inconsistent services.

BSEST spokespersons say that the company has managed to get around this problem by working on "distributed architecture."

They are quick to acknowledge that in the longer term, providing plain vanilla connectivity may not rake in the revenues for an ISP. This is why, like most ISPs across the world, the company is working on an application service provider (ASP) model.

Sources said, the ASP model will target small businesses. This, the spokesperson said, will bring in the real revenue streams. The caveat in this case being the fact that volumes have to be very high.

Responding to a query on whether BSEST is straying away from its core competencies, the spokesperson argued that it was not the case. His contention being that world over, power companies moving into the telecom business made eminent sense.

This, because, by virtue of the fact that they offer power, they have access to the much coveted `last mile.'