27 October 2004	Wednesday	12 Ramazan 1425

ISLAMABAD, Oct 26: Federal Minister for Information Technology Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari on Tuesday said with the launch of Wireless Local Loop (WLL) telephone system, two million new connections would be offered under served areas.

Briefing parliamentarians from the southern Punjab, the minister said "We have already launched the WLL system in some areas of the country with the aim to provide telecom services to people in every nook and corner of the country with special focus on under served areas such as the southern Punjab."

He said the Southern Punjab had been an under served area in terms of telecommunication facilities and he had particularly been instructed by the prime minister to bridge this gap by bringing the area at par with the rest of the country through a wide network of WLL exchanges to be installed in the region this year.

The minister said the PTCL was poised to give away two million new connections in the current year marking a major development in the history of telecom operations in the country.

"So far the PTCL had given away only 4.5 million connections but this year alone the figure would go up by almost 50 per cent because of the installation of WLL system across the country," he added.

Giving details of the WLL lines to be installed this year, the minister said the PTCL had launched the WLL project in two phases with 284,900 lines to be given in the first phase and 2,284,900 lines to be installed in the second phase.

He told the parliamentarians that the Multan telecom region would be a major beneficiary of this year's development work with as many as 221,500 lines to be installed in districts of Khanewal, Vehari, Bahawalnagar, Bahawalpur, Rahimyar Khan, Rajanpur, Muzaffargarh, Dera Ghazi Khan, Layyah and Multan.

He further said in the first phase, the PTCL would install 86,500 lines in the Multan telecom region while in the second phase another 135,000 new lines would be added to the system.

"The company would install 45 base transceiver stations in the first phase and 82 such stations in the second phase in the region, paving the way for the provision of telecom services in every nook and corner of the Multan telecom region," he added.

During the briefing, he also informed the legislators that as a result of an investor-friendly policy approved by the government, major international telecommunication operators participated in the auction for frequency spectrum for mobile cellular operations which was auctioned at $ 291 million per operator in an open and transparent manner.