"Vajpayee is scheduled to be in Hyderabad to inaugurate the L&T Hitech City, and we thought we would take advantage of his presence to launch the service," Satyam Infoway managing director R Ramraj said.

The services will be launched initially in 12 cities, offering leased line, ISDN and dial-up connectivity to subscribers, while 25 more cities are expected to be added to the list by end-December or early January, he said.

Satyam Infoway is the first private-sector company to be awarded the Category A licence to launch Internet access services in the country. The company is targeting 1,00,000 subscribers within the first year itself at a tariff of Rs 3,600 for 100 hours, and Rs 9,900 for 500 hours, apart from a Rs 300one-time subscription fee.

Satyam Infoway has an advantage over other ISP aspirants, considering it operates a fairly large network for major corporates in the country besides for its own use. A wholly-owned subsidiary of the Hyderabad-based Satyam Computers, the Rs 40-crore Satyam Infoway is preparing and waiting in the wings for almost a year-and-a-half for the ISP policy to come through. To that extent, it has an edge over competition with considerable experience in operating networks.

Maintaining that the option to set up the last-mile link-up to subscribers' doorsteps had come as a pleasent surprise, Ramaraj said that the company was still mulling over whether to go in for microwave links or terrestrial lines for this. He, however, felt that it was still early days to talk about the prospect.