AP telecom to provide Net facilities in villages

HYDERABAD: Andhra Pradesh Telecom Circle is going to introduce Internet in all the villages. About 1,104 Mandals in AP will be provided the facility of Internet within the next six months. Once this is done, the state government has got plans to develop some portals, so that the region specific information can be given to the farmer community. This was stated by J. Ramanujam, Chief General Manager, Andhra Pradesh Telecom Circle.

The AP telecom is also going to introduce the cellular phones in a very large way. About 1.95 lakh cell phones have been approved for AP. This will be done in nine months and it will be in all the districts. Mainly the phones will be used for mobile applications and a few of them will also be used for accessing remote villages that cannot be reached by cables. Another program will involve the setting up of village public telephones in about 23,000 villages. Half of them are working on a radio system called MARR and the rest will be made functional in a very short time.

J. Ramajunam said," We have the widest presence in AP, we are also setting up a national Internet backbone that would be ready in a couple of weeks. The services of Internet will be improved. Moreover, the chief general managers have been given powers to match the tariff offered by competing operators. We’ll, therefore, be quite competitive in pricing also. The basic idea is to give quality service to our customers."