Kerala emerges telecommunications leader
Friday, 06 October 2006, 19:30 IST
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Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala has progressed by leaps and bounds in the telecommunications sector and has many firsts to its credit, according to Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL). Kerala is the first state in the country to provide public telephone facility in all village bodies and villages. It is also the first to have all digital electronic exchanges with STD facility, said S.A. Thomas, chief general manager of BSNL'S Kerala Circle on the eve of the circle's sixth anniversary Friday. With an impressive tele-density of 12.20 telephones per 100 population, BSNL in Kerala has a record 3.8 million working lines. Thomas also said that the Kerala Circle has the highest waiting list in the country for new phone lines that stands approximately at 250,000. "We feel that we can clear this by the end of the current fiscal and we would give a record 800,000 new cell phone connections also in this fiscal. Today, BSNL Cellular mobile has 1.7 million subscribers, making us leaders in the state," said Thomas. The net profit for the circle also went up from 1.19 billion during 2004-05 to 2.1 billion during the last fiscal.
Source: IANS
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