It has also lined-up the launch of its Internet services in four other major cities of Gujarat at Baroda, Surat, Jamnagar and Gandhidham (Kandla) by this month-end, having already appointed its service support agents in all the six cities in the state.

The company next proposes to cover Delhi and Rajasthan by July, and Mumbai and Maharashtra by September.

When contacted, Wilnet general manager Mukul Sharma said, "We had applied for licence to provide Internet services in three states soon after the liberalisation of Internet services by DoT in 1998-end. Our company is one of the first private companies to apply for a licence."

So far, Wilnet provided sevices to its 2,500-odd users through leased lines as a franchise of Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL) under the jurisdiction ofAhmedabad telephone district. However, VSNL continues to have its only other Internet franchise in Ahmedabad with Babul Technologies.

Meanwhile, Wilnet has obtained licence from Department of Telecommunication (DoT) as service provider at 16 locations in three states -- months before its agreement with VSNL expired on February 28.

Wilnet claims to command over 65 per cent market share in Ahmedabad till now. While VSNL had been depending on Wilnet network, Babul offerred its premises and personnel to run VSNL equipment.

"Technically," Sharma said, "even VSNL need to apply for a licence now after DoT had announced the new policy."

Shrama said that Wilnet would continue to provide the same quality service in the Cadila Pharmaceuticals philosophy of `quality at affordable price', which had enabled it to garner 75 per cent of dial-up subscribers and nearly all the leased line subscribers in Ahmedabad.

He said that Wilnet had already spent over Rs 2 crore during its VSNL franchise period itself on nodeequipment and infrastructure and now intended to pump in necessary investment to provide world class Internet service to subscribers in new locations as well.

He is confident that with the installation of 180 lines there would be no congestion as these lines were occupied by subscribers of other nodes. It also proposed to offer other value-added services like Virtual Private Network (VPN), Co-location Server, Secure Conferencing, Dedicated Dial-Up and Web Hosting, with access to 50 locations across the country.

The tariif structure is designed to provide 100 hours TCP/IP dial-up access at Rs 3,000, the 270-hour account for Rs 6,500, the 550-hour access for Rs 10,000 -- with 10 per cent additional hours with the same `value for money'. He said that servers in Ahmedabad would now get instantateneous information of their accounts without any waiting for the same to be received from Mumbai.