New Delhi, Aug 14: MTNL plans to invest Rs 2,284 crore this fiscal for developing telecom infrastructure, including CDMA network in the country, Rajya Sabha was informed on Thursday. Announcing this, Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology Ashok Pradhan said in a written reply that the main projects planned by MTNL include provision of 350,000 new connections by augmenting the net switching capacity by 400,000.
Also, it plans to provide new 50,000 trunk automatic exchange tandem lines, commission 200 digital line connections, replace 395,000 E-10B switches and commission 20,000 km optical fibre cable.
Pradhan said the MTNL has formulated a VRS for its group ‘C' and `D' employees but the scheme is yet to be approved by the government.
The minister said cellular subscribers grew to over 1.51 crore by July 2003 against only 33,8665 in April 1997.
Bureau Report