A decision to this effect will be taken this week, Siti Cable executive director Hari K Goenka told The Financial Express.

The cable network company is going to apply for permission to the local authorities in the two cities for laying fibre optics.

Siti Cable has earmarked Rs 200 crore for the project in seven cities including Hyderabad, Bangalore, Madras and Calcutta. But the budget could go up depending on the facilities the Government allows the network to offer, Goenka said.

Hyderabad is the first city where Siti Cable started transition work from co-axial cables to fibre optics late last year. The project is expected to be over in a month's time. "We have already tested the control rooms between Hyderabad and Secunderabad. There was some delay as we had toimport optical equipment from the US," Goenka said.

Siti Cable has ambitious plans of creating bandwidth for services like basic and cellular telephony, if the Government allows private companies to go ahead with such convergence in technologies.

Siti Cable, which launched Siti Cinema on April 9, plans to spread to 100 cities in three months. The channel is currently available in 42 cities. The company has acquired more than 1,000 films on a five-year contract, Goenka said.

Siti Cinema has introduced some innovative marketing initiatives like segmenting movies for different audience groups. While fun movies for kids will be aired on the late morning time band in Sundays, religious films for the above 50-year-olds will be shown on Tuesdays. The Monday afternoon show will target women above 25 years. With the strengthening of Siti channel's news programming and the growth of Siti Cinema, Goenka feels the cable network can pose a serious challenge to the Hindujas-owned IN Cablenet which enjoys a majorityshare of the cable market in Mumbai. "Once we provide better services, there is no reason why our network can't expand," Goenka said.