Under the one-year freedom plan, Dishnet will offer Net access for one hour a day for Rs 1,188 for the entire year. This will bring down the cost of access to Rs 99 per month. However, at present the service will be available only in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore and Pune from May 15 and followed by Hyderabad and Calcutta. Other cities will follow later.

According to Buerkler, the company has till now notched up a subscriber base of 82,000 subscribers. The company has applied for permission to set up international gateways in seven cities including Chennai, Pune, Delhi, Bangalore, Ahemedabad and Hyderabad. It will also invest heavily in e-commerce and content-development for which it is already on the lookout for tie-ups, said newly appointed chief executive officer Erich Buerkler at a press conference. To fund these activities, the company had recently received FIPB clearance to raise over Rs 1,300 crore through the issue of American Depository Receipt (ADR) or Global Depository Receipt (GDR). It plans to divest up to 45 per cent of its equity.

Overseas investors like Covad Communications group and CenturyTel Inc who had invested $70 million in the company. Other investors include HSBC Private Equity Funds, Citicorp International Finance Corporation and IQ Investments. It has also entered into a tie-up with HSBC which will enable processing of transactions on Dishnet's portal through HSBC's credit cards and infrastructure. After the gateways are set up, the bandwidth provided by Dishnet will go up to a whopping 72 mbps as against 1.5 mbps at present, Buerkler pointed out. Dishnet presently offers broadband services only in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Pune and Bangalore and is targeting 5,000 subscribers for it by June-end. It is presently offering dial-up services across 34 cities.