Friday, May 27 2005 22:01 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: State-run BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd) will start international long distance services directly to 23 countries and has signed bilateral international service agreements with six international carriers for routing of ILD calls.

Some of the other new initiatives include introduction of ILD services directly to 23 countries and countrywide launch and spread of broadband services.

"We have signed bilateral international service agreements with six international carriers for routing of international long distance calls. At present, we are directly routing out-bound international traffic to 23 countries," A K Sinha, CMD, BSNL said addressing the CGMs conference.

There will be an emphasis on value added services of the corporations network. "Last year BSNL earned Rs 50 crore from value added services", he added.

"We are looking forward to 3G networks and provision of content based services like VPN, multicasting, video conferencing, video on demand, broadcast application etc for our cellular and broadband customers," Sinha said.

GSM based mobile public call offices, appointing a brand ambassador, modifying the commission structure for PCOs, introducing new value added services in the network are some of the other priorities, he said.

The targets for the various telecom circles included, 100 per cent rural telephony by the end of 2006, cellular services in all Tehsil and block headquarters and strict adherence to the three year expansion of the network by another 80 million, adding 6.6 million internet and 6 million broadband connections.