Phone-on-demand by March 2000

VADODARA, Aug 21: For applicants who have been waiting for ages to get a telephone connection, here is good news. The Department of Telec...

VADODARA, Aug 21: For applicants who have been waiting for ages to get a telephone connection, here is good news. The Department of Telecommunication (DoT) has embarked on a major expansion plan in Vadodara telecom district, and hopes to make phone on-demand a reality by March-end next year.

The ambitious project, which would cost the department a huge 100 crores, would cover all the 11 major city exchanges. General Manager, DoT, Vadodara district, Rakesh Babu said that the plan so far has gone without any glitches. “We expect everything to go smoothly, and by March next we are likely to be in a situation where we can provide telephone on demand,” he told Vadodara Newsline.

Babu said that this year the DoT target was to provide 24,000 additional lines. Out of that till July 31, 5000 lines have already been provided. “With the additional 19,000 lines we would be in a position to clear the waiting list of 13,000 applicants,” he said. Once the wait-list is cleared the department would have an additional 6000 lines, which, according to Babu, would be utilised for meeting the anticipated excess demand.

Telecom officials said that the project would mean an expenditure of Rs 30,000 on each additional line created. Officials further said that all the additional lines would be possible only with the expansion of the major telephone exchanges in the city. “We are installing the required machinery as it is coming in,” Babu said.

Already, some expansion work has been carried out in exchanges like Alkapuri, Subhanpura, Fatehgunj, Nizampura, Jawahar Nagar and Sayajigunj. Telecom sources said that in all these exchanges, the wait-list has been cleared till March 31 this year. But they said that with more applicants coming in, the exchanges will have to be expanded further to meet demand. In other exchanges like Karelibaug and Waghodia, the wait-list has been cleared till June 1998.

Sources said that besides the expansion of exchanges, associated machinery like jelly-filled cables would also be procured. Officials believed that the procurement was necessary as cables had been damaged recently during the digging by the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) workers.

The DoT will also have a provision of additional cards in the exchanges in case of damage to the existing ones. This, according to officials, was necessary in view of the recent incident in Karelibaug exchange were hundreds of telephone lines went out of order when the card got damaged and there was no spare.

Story continues below this ad

Also, in the rural areas of the district, the expansion plan has already been implemented in various areas. Recently, telephone exchanges in Dabhoi, Samyala and Sandasal were expanded, with which the wait-list of subscribers in these areas have been cleared.

While in Dabhoi an additional 384 lines were created and the wait-list till July 31 cleared, the Samlaya exchange’s expansion resulted in creation of 640 additional lines. In Sandasal, the exchange’s expansion resulted in creation of 256 (C-DOT) additional lines.