Bangalore: Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has planned voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) gateways between Bangalore and major cities for carrying national long-distance traffic, a senior BSNL official said on July 5.

Principal general manager of Bangalore Telecom District B R Baliga said that the first VoIP gateway between Kolkata and Bangalore has already been commissioned and live traffic on trial basis has already been put through and STD calls between the two cities are now carried on that format.

"Similar VoIP gateways have been planned between Bangalore and Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Ahmedabad and Pune," Baliga told reporters.

He also said that high quality video conferencing facility between Bangalore and Delhi would be introduced soon. In this regard, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) technology is being introduced between the two cities. Trials are already on. The technology also would facilitate dynamic allocation of bandwidth for data/leased line customers.

BSNL, he said, intends to provide call-hunting facilities to all customers in Bangalore who have two or more telephone lines in their office/residence. This would enable the customers not to miss any incoming calls since the call would be delivered on the free telephone line available even when the dialed number is busy, Baliga explained.

According to him, 14,878 new telephone connections, including 2,000 fixed wireless on local loop (WLL) ones, have been provided by BSNL in Bangalore Telecom District during the first quarter (April-June) of 2002-03.

PTI