Lucknow: Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on October 19 termed the rapid strides made in the field of telecommunications in the country in the recent past as a major achievement of his government and said that this has made the entire world easily accessible.

He was speaking after launching the countrywide cellular services of the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) by making the inaugural call to Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani in New Delhi from the Raj Bhawan.

Vajpayee lauded this initiative of BSNL, describing it as a great step forward in the field of telecommunications.

Observing that there are people who still thought that the country needed more food than telephones, Prime Minister said it is a fact that the facility has improved the living standard of the people and brought them closer to each other.

The Prime Minister recalled the times when telephones were a scarce commodity. But now there was no scarcity of either the instruments or of immediate availability of phone connections, both mobiles and the traditional ones.

The Prime Minister said he was happy to observe that today there were as many as one crore mobile phone users in the country and they were gradually becoming more popular than the stationary phones.

The main emphasis of the country was to continue to make strides in the fields of Science and Technology, where India today has made place for itself, Vajpayee said, adding today there was a lot of competition in the field of Science and Technology which has helped the country win laurels and helped its rapid development and progress.

Earlier, Union Minister for Telecommunications, Pramod Mahajan, highlighted the salient features of the mobile service started by BSNL.

PTI