According to a recent survey conducted by Nasscom, the size of the Internet market within the country is expected to grow to five million connections by 2002. Addressing presspersons here on Monday, TTL director S Ramakrishnan said that the finer details of the project were yet to be worked out. TTL is setting up the basic services network in Andhra Pradesh. The company crossed the 1,000-connections mark since the launch of services 40 days back in the state.

According to Ramakrishnan, TTL was looking forward to introduce a host of services like virtual private networks, unified messaging and interactive voice response systems and infotainment services within the state. While the introduction ofthe new services would depend on the lincensing conditions, the Internet services would be offered by the new ISP company from the group, he indicated.

Speaking on the occasion, Tata group chairman Ratan Tata said he was looking forward to a larger investment by the group in Andhra Pradesh in areas other than telecommunications where it already has the single largest exposure to date.

While the Tatas will be investing over $2 billion in the initial licence period of 15 years in the basic services project, its exposure in the cellular services project in the state, Tata Communications Ltd, is estimated at around Rs 3,000 crore.

"We are happy to be a part of the telecom revolution in the progressive state of AP and we hope to continue partnering it in other areas as well," he said. Addressing the gathering earlier, AP chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu said that he too expected Ratan Tata to invest in other areas in the state. "We are willing to extend whatever help is required to make this possible," hesaid.