Thereafter over intervals of three months, the services will be taken to Bangalore, Hyderabad, Vishakapatnam, etc. An investment of Rs 25 crore to Rs 40 crore is expected in each city. Services such as radio on Net, education through Net, retailing, etc, will also be introduced. These services will help in building up a community, unlike dial-up services, where such possibilities were more remote.

The radio over Net concept will also be extended to video-conferencing of festivals/functions/marriages. These would be done at various control towers in the city, where chairs will be laid out for visitors. The facility will enable visitors to save energy/time on travel to the actual venue of the function, while allowing them to participate in the function.

The serviceswould be very affordable, said Hathway Vice President EVS Chakravarthy. In Chennai alone the company has laid 70 kms of fibre-optic cable, and was also helping cable operators upgrade the last mile connectivity to the home. As a Multiple Service Operator (MSO) Hathway is very keen to involve the cable operators at every level. The cable operator will essentially do the marketing and get a 10 per cent revenue share on the Internet earnings and other services.

In addition Hathway will also be helping operators to upgrade the last mile connectivity to the home. "It is important that the customer does not jump to the conclusion that cable Internet is unsuitable," Chakravarthy said. To this end, Hathway is bringing in international standards for cable networking - the equipment used is highend - Sun Microsystems, Cisco routers, and 860 Mhz amplifiers to minimise noise in the network. Hathway will also promote Internet usage through roadshows. There will be exhibitions which will bring about the hardware manufacturers, modem sellers and retail financiers (to give loans) on one platform, to enable the customer to buy the necessary equipment.

On the service front, the customer will be charged Rs 800 per month. There will be a 24 hour call centre and trained service personnel to attend to customers' problems. A 2 Mbps gateway is planned initially, which will be out-sourced. The networks will be locally maintained - in other words the Internet network of Hyderabad will be quite different from Chennai or Mumbai, and the cities will not be linked. There will be different content portals for each city.