More importantly, in rural areas there is not even a single telephone connection in more than 2.40 lakh villages - Major emphasis must be given to increasing the tele-density in the rural areas, he added. Speaking on the occasion the Minister of State for Communications, Tapan Sikdar called for rooting out corruption in the Department and maintain a clean image and provide flawless customer services. Referring to the incident in which it was found out recently that some illegal operation of international services through foreign satellites which has been detected at Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Delhi and Calcutta, Sikdar exhorted the vigilance department to be more active.

Stating that the demand for telephone was dependent on several economical parameters and per capita income of the people, he said the effort should be to make available telephone on demand in all the states. Referring to the village public telephones (VPTs), he said that the MARR technology, which was not found very dependable should be replaced in a phased manner to give better service. It would be necessary to provide the STD facility to the VPTs wherever there was a possibility, he added.