Sunderasan, who was in Nashik to present the Sanohar Sarathi awards and release the Nashik Telephone Directory-1998, said the parallel telephone operations by Hughes Ispat would be headquartered either in Navi Mumbai or Pune. Telecom authorities would retrain their staff and upgrade operations to compete with private companies, he added.

The regulatory authority had been asked by the department to revise the tariff structure with a view to raising the competency level of the telecom department, he added. The Central government, on the other hand, is being asked to decentralise power and permit district general managers to purchase equipment, Sunderasan added.

He further said that though recruitment had beenfrozen since 1984, there were still 21 employees per 1,000 lines. But attempts were being made to reduce the staff strength to 20 employees per 1,000 lines, he said.

The Telecom department has already begun operating the Short Distance Charging Area (SDCA) system which connects adjacent talukas. Also, calls are now charged locally -- instead of STD rates -- each unit duration being three minutes.

Sunderasan however pointed out that while the existing telecom network was governed by a uniform tariff structure throughout the country, a private company would be able offer concessions (in tariff or in the form of free calls) in a particular area to woo subscribers. The tarrif regulatory authority was aware of this fact, he added.

He said the existing capacity of the Maharashtra Telecom Circle (excluding Mumbai but including Goa) was 20 lakh lines and would soon be expanded to 25 lakh lines. Of these, three lakh connections would be given out before March 1999. Besides all exchanges in the circle would havedirect access to the Internet instead of having to make STD calls to the nearest city, Sunderasan added. He said that the Telecom Circle would provide only 5,000 more public telephones in villages. Private companies would be expected to contribute to the service, he said. The Circle has so far provided phones in 28,000 out of 40,000 villages.