Shyam's network in Fiji will be inaugurated on August 4. The company is also working on other turnkey projects in Madagascar, Kenya, Yemen and hopes to install around 20,000 lines worldwide in the next one year.

According to chairman and managing director Rajiv Mehrotra said, "the company won the Fiji contract amidst stiff competition from international players such as Ericsson, Hyundai and other telecom biggies. The inquiry for 3,500 lines of the digitally enhanced cordless technology (DECT) based WLL was floated by Telecom Fiji in March 1998."

Shyam Telecom signed the contract for supplying 1,000 lines of DECT-based WLL system worth $1.8 million with Telecom Fiji on November 10, 1998. The project was divided into three major parts including survey, planning, supply, installation andcommissioning.

Mehrotra added that the complete supply was executed in March 1999. A team of engineers from Shyam Telecom and another from IIT Chennai was sent to Fiji in the first week of May for installation and commissioning of the service. He added that Fiji Telecom will decide the order for the additional 2,500 lines valued at $4 million, based on the performance of the installed system.

Incidentally, the system is based on the indigenously developed CorDECT technology of IIT Chennai. Shyam Telecom has based its DECT-XS system on the CorDECT platform. CorDECT was recently in the news after the BJP-led government withdrew the concessional import duty on competing equipment.Mehrotra added that Fiji Telecom did not shortlist the bigger international telecom outfits offering code division multiple access (CDMA) based and DECT-based systems due to their high cost and other technical non-conformities regarding data and fax capability. "There were a number of problems related to line signalling, billing andregister scaling, but the IIT product-support team led by Ashok Jhunjhunwala completed the software programming and other related work in a record time of two weeks," he added.Mehrotra claimed that it was for the first time that alot of new system network hardware and methods were employed including the installation and commissioning of the base station distributor link to the base station controller with optical fibre cable and radios.

"The base stations were installed at a distance of 100 km from the BSC while the E-1 was interfaced to the main exchange through 200 km-long optical fibre cables," he added. Another feature of the system is that the line of site coverage is 10 km, as a result of the technological advancement in the DECT-based WLL system.