The BSTTM which will be an integral part of the IIT Delhi, will be a center of excellence for education and research relating to all facets of telecommunication technology and management, said Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman and group managing director, Bharti Enterprises. It will host state-of-the-art laboratories and infrastructure and a research environment to attract the best faculty and students. The School will run post-graduate academic programmes including M.Tech, MBA, and PhD in collaboration with the various departments and centres of IIT Delhi.

The School will also run short-term education programmes for personnel of the telecom industry as well. The first batch of the school will commence in July 2001, with admission activities beginning by the end of this year. A ten-member board will run the school. Three of the Board members, including the co-chairman, will be from Bharti.

One hundred students will be inducted each year. Two courses will be offered initially - An 18-month course for an M.Tech in telecom and management and a two year MBA program on telecom infrastructure management. B.Tech/ BE in Electronics and Electrical streams will be the minimum eligibility required for sitting in the entrance exam (GATE) for the M.Tech program, which will be conducted by IIT. However, graduates from all other streams can apply for the MBA program. The students enrolling in the institute, will be completely funded by the the Bharti Foundations, which was also set up on Monday.

Bharti has committed Rs 20 crore towards BSTTM. Of this, Rs 10 crore will be spent on creating a new building complex for the school within the IIT Delhi premises, and the remaining to be kept with the institute for future use.

The School will enjoy a special relationship with Bharti Enterprises in terms of industrial internship offered, faculty visits and exchanges, research collaboration and other assistanceas may be required by the School from time to time. However, the school would also seek alliance with other telecom majors including Ericsson, Motorola, British Telecom etc., to help out in the venture. "This is the first partnership in education, which I believe is a decisive step towards corporate involvement and contribution to research and higher technical education in the country," he added.

According to Mittal, the Bharti Foundation will support education by setting up schools and institutes for higher learning and promote activities in the field's of medical research, social welfare and humanitarian population, Arts and culture, sports, environment, ecology, etc. The Group is also setting up schools in all 65 districts of Madhya Pradesh, though Bharti Telenet Limited, as part of its other education initiative.

Three lakh new lines in 2 weeks
Bharti Cellular Limited, the leading cellular services provider in Delhi, has invested Rs 100 crore to set up 3 lakh new lines in its Delhi Network. According to Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman and group managing director, Bharti Enterprises, 90 per cent of the work is already done and the lines will be operational in a couple of weeks. According to Mittal, AirTel, which had crossed the two-lakh subscriber mark in June to become the largest metro operator in the country, will be able to service over 5 lakh customers, once the new lines are operational. Meanwhile, dismissing the current slow-down in the number of additional subscribers, which seems to have gripped the cellular operators on a national basis, as periodic, Mittal said that the months from May to July are always a little slow. He is confident that there will be an upswing from August onwards.