Indus to float phone cards

MUMBAI, Sept 12: Indus Telecom, an associate company of Industar Inc, is setting up about 4,000 pay phones in Mumbai and Pune which can be operated with phone cards. The company has entered into an arrangement with Hughes Ispat, the basic telecom provider for Maharashtra and Goa, to set up, manage and operate these pay phones. The service will be operational by the year end and will eventually be extended to cover the whole circle.

In the first phase, pay phones will be manned by the franchisees of Indus Telecom and later uprgraded to be used with phone cards. The instrument, a proprietary product of the company, has facility to read chips and magnetic cards. It can also accept coins like conventional pay phones.