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MUMBAI, Dec. 31

STATE-owned Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd is spreading out red carpet to customers for the coming year. In what appears to be an aggressive pricing strategy to garner clients, the company will waive installation charges for new connections in January, as well as offer free Internet service for 100 days from January 26 onwards.

``One does not even have to take an Internet service. All one has to do is to dial 48880000,''said the Minister for IT and Telecommunications, Mr Pramod Mahajan.

``Even after the 100-day offer, we are going to talk to the regulator so that Internet access will be very cheap. It will be such that one would not have to pay for the ISP separately; the cost will be included in your telephone charges," he said.

Mr Mahajan said the Government's intention was to see an add-on of one crore telephone lines in the country during the coming year.

The number of telephone connections in the country has increased from 1.5 crore lines in 1998 to around four crore today, he said.

``By the end of the next year we'd like to see five crore connections in the country," he added.

The Minister also launched Garuda — the limited mobility service of MTNL based on CDMA technology — here.

The service has already been launched in Delhi. Charges for this are akin to fixed line charges (Rs 1.2 per metered unit of three minutes), and only the calling party pays.

The monthly rental fee is Rs 450. If the customer does not arrange independently for a CDMA mobile handset, he will have to pay Rs 5,000 as security deposit.

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