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Thomas K. Thomas

New Delhi April 3 State-owned Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd has floated a Rs 210-crore tender for buying equipment for offering broadband services in Delhi and Mumbai. The bids for the project will be opened on April 27. Equipment manufacturing companies including ZTE, UTStarcom and Huawei are expected to bid for the project.

This would be one of the biggest broadband roll outs being undertaken by MTNL which will enable users to get services like high speed Internet connectivity and other value-added services such as video multicast, video on demand. The telecom PSU has set a target of increasing its user base from 3 lakh to 5 lakh broadband users by the end of the financial year.

MTNL and BSNL are leading the broadband growth in the country. The total subscriber base now stands at 2.5 million. The Government has declared 2007 as the Year of the broadband and set a target of 10 million subscribers.

The growth potential in Broadband services has prompted equipment manufacturers to bet big on India. UTStarcom, ZTE and Siemens had recently signed a contract from BSNL to deploy 1.3 million broadband lines across 900 cities in the country for about Rs 900 crore.

In a bid to boost broadband penetration in the country, the Department of Telecom has also decided to extend support from the Universal Services Obligation fund to operators offering broadband services in rural areas.

This is in addition to the earlier decision to support cellular telephone infrastructure in the villages through the USO Fund. The decision to include broadband services in the scope of USO fund will benefit companies such as Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, BSNL and also smaller operators such as Hathway and Dishnet.

The move comes after suggestions made by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and demands made by the industry. TRAI has suggested giving fiscal sops to users and companies to promote broadband usage.

More Stories on : Broadband | Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd | Telecommunications

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