Silicon Mountains has installed a 100 km hybrid fibre cable (HFC) backbonering that spans the length and breadth of Pune city. The company has atechnology tie up with Terayon of the US for cable head end equipment tobring high speed Internet to homes and offices. The Internet service comesfrom GECS, which is a national ISP and it will be delivered via Silicon'scable network systems. Global is setting up a gateway operation in Pune forthis purpose and will start its satellite gateway with bandwidth of 120 Mbpsby end of next month, Kumar Chakravarty, director, sales and marketing ofGlobal said.

Chairman of Silicon Mountains, S S Patil is expecting to have around 25,000subscribers in Pune in the first year. "We have so far invested Rs 8 crorein the project of which equity is Rs 2 crore while the remaining portion hasbeen funded through debt," Patil said. Patil is heading a group of cableoperators called Pune Associated Cable Network (PAC). Continued on Page IIThe PAC Network covers almost 70 per cent of the cable population in Pune.The service is not based on the conventional time tariff. Silicon has fixedmonthly charges at Rs 1,200 for the connection and rental of Rs 350 for thedata cable modem for 24 hour services. Initially the company would also becharging Rs 2,000 for installation and Rs 3,000 as non-refundable deposit.

Vasant Patwardhan, director of Silicon Mountains, said net via fibre cablewas a superior option to leased line connectivity over copper line, whichhas a maximum throughput of 2 Mbps as against 200 Mbps through the HFCnetwork. This translated to Internet connectivity of 10 Mbps per connection.