Talking to media persons, chief operating officer Deepak Verma (Tamil Naducircle) said that the company was actively planning to build networkinfrastructure within Tamil Nadu which would facilitate internet operationsin the state. BPL also holds an ISP licence and operations in Tamil Naduwere expected to commence early in 2000. The investment would lay theinfrastructure for an additional 800 km to the current 1250 km.

The company has spent more than Rs 650 crore to set up the existingmicrowave backbone in the state, which also includes a part of the licencefee stipulated earlier by the government. It commenced operations in 1996and quickly went beyond its minimum mandate of linking the 50 per cent ofdistrict headquarters. BPL Mobile is in 41 towns in Tamil Nadu.

Between 2000 and 2001, the company aims to network 120 more towns thuscompleting the backbone infrastructure for the state. For the future, thecompany would not just look at the microwave link up but embark on opticalfibre network which could hold more data traffic.

The company's subscriber base jumped from 28,000 in April to 46,000 inNovember. This was done by bringing out attractive pricing for subscriberswhich also led to increase in airtime usage from 130 minutes to 411 minutesper person per month. Falling costs of handsets, free incoming calls gavefurther impetus.

The success of the earlier schemes has led to a new one for the millennium.The latest Vivegam plan launched in all 41 towns entails a flat monthlyrental of Rs 777 and outgoing calls are charged at 77 paise for 2 minutes.This holds true for mobile to mobile calls anywhere in Tamil Nadu outside ofChennai offering an enormous cost advantage to customers by way of STDusage. However, the caller would still have to go through DoT when enteringanother circle, but charges would still be minimised. This was better thanthe rates offered by competitor Aircell which charged Rs 1.40 for twominutes of outgoing calls, which had however a lower monthly rent.