Bharat Sanchar Nigam, the state-owned telecommunications company, is stepping up international connectivity by setting up undersea cable between Chennai and Sri Lanka.

Besides, it has signed agreement with seven international long distance service providers in Italy, Canada, Singapore, Kuwait, Japan, France and Hong Kong for carrying its voice and data traffic.

K G Sharma, chief general manager (Maharashtra and Goa circle), said, "We are laying cable to Sri Lanka from Chennai. We have chosen Sri Lanka because several international cables pass through from there and we can link with them to get connectivity to the West."

Although BSNL is routing its international traffic through the Tata group's Videsh Sanchar Nigam, it has also forged dialogues with other carriers overseas to route its traffic.

"We are in discussion with ILD operators and by March 2005 we will have at least 2-3 more agreements in place," said AK Sinha, chairman and managing director of BSNL. He was speaking at the sidelines of the rural marketing summit 2004 organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry in Mumbai.

Sinha pointed out that the BSNL's expenditure plan in 2004-05 was close to Rs 12,000 crore (Rs 120 billion). The company does not expect to slow down on the GSM operations and in fact intends to increase its subscriber base five times from 5 million in March 2004 to 25 million by end of December 2005.

On the CDMA plans, Sinha claimed that BSNL has set up a committee to look into the details and will take a view accordingly.

BSNL is also launching its broadband by December 2004 under the brand 'DataOne'. Initially, the broadband presence will be in 200 cities and will eventually be rolled out in other cities across the country.

On the issue of merger of BSNL and MTNL, Sinha said, "there is not only a necessity but an urgency to merge these two. Today, the trouble of merging the two companies is less."