The cellular operator would also be investing Rs 400 crore in the three states to provide mobile service in 200 towns within the next three years.

With Haryana chief minister, Om Parkash Chautala announcing major forays by the state government into IT sector by making Gurgaon the IT town and following the example of chief minister N Chanderbabu Naidu and the new IT Policy 2000 on the cards, the Escotel is upbeat in launching new services.

The CEO and executive director of Escotel Mobile Communications Ltd, Manoj Kohli and operations chief, Deepak Khanna met senior state government officials to develop an international electronic commerce hub in the state.

Escotel plans to introduce SMS (short messaging service) soon. The company will not be charging the subscribers for this value-added service.

Presently, Escotel provides services in 92 towns, 2000 villages and 61 highway towns.

The company provides roamimg facilities in 360 cities and major highways with automatic roaming. Kohli claimed that the Escotel customer base had now crossed the 25,000 customer mark in Haryana alone. In March 1999, the customer base in Haryana was just above 14,000 and it has almost doubled in the current financial year despite rhe exclusion of Panchkula from Haryana cellular circle.

Escotel's all India customer base has crossed the 1,35,000 mark across its three cellular circles of UP (west), Haryana and Kerala. He said that this was an important milestone in Escotel's move towards achieving financial break-even and profitability. He said that the average revenue per customer had gone up to Rs 1,300 for post-paid customers which was among the highest in the non-metro circles.

The growth has been achieved through efforts of providing more value to customers through cutting edge technology, value-added services, customer-friendly tariff plans and wide reach of coverage. Last year, it added six towns to the company network. Deepak Khanna, circle operations head, Haryana, said that the information services that has been provided include vetline, crop health line, car breakdown assistance, courier delivery, train ticket bookings or value- added services like voice mail service, automatic roaming or short message service. Escotel has also launched some projects with social objectives like Grameen Phone project which aims to bring modern cellular services within reach of rural masses.