The government also asked the centre to throw open the Ernet infrastructure for software professionals and not to restrict it only to educational institutions. The optical fibre cable laid by institutions such as Konkan Railway should be opened up for commercial use, it said. Chief secretary P Subrahmanyam made these demands on Thursday during a meeting with visiting members of the prime minister's task force on information technology and software development. The task force was headed by its co-chairperson MGK Menon.

Subrahmanyam emphasised the need for a large number of ISPs (Internet service providers) to appropriately cover thewhole of Maharashtra thereby enabling state agencies to take up the work either on their own or through joint ventures. Internet nodes need to be set up in all the towns where the population was more than one lakh in the state, he said.

Subrahmanyam said that earth stations should be set up across the state to cover areas around Nagpur, Aurangabad, Nashik, Kolhapur, Solapur and Amravati. The whole purpose of information technology was to bring about larger, seamless connectivity across the different users and any impediments in respect of policy should be removed, he added.

Subrahmanyam said the state government would make all efforts to bring the use of information technology within the reach of school going children. He said the implementation of projects like schoolnet would put the best teaching facilities, available only to select few in the developed areas, within easy reach of children in underdeveloped regions.

A unique "wired villages project" has been planned to be implemented at Varna Nagarin Kolhapur district, he said. It would cover 70 villages proposes to use IT to increase the efficiency of existing cooperatives in the field of sugar, paper, dairy, engineering colleges and other educational institutions.