ISLAMABAD, Jan 2: The National Telecommunication Corporation (NTC) should prepare itself to compete with other organizations in the post-deregulation scenario.

This was stated by the minister of state for information technology and telecommunications, Mohammad Raza Hiraj, at the NTC Headquarters here on Thursday.

The minister said the NTC would face new challenges when the telecom sector was deregulated. The government on its part would make efforts to modernize the corporation, he added.

The minister said the NTC would be made a viable organization. “The role of the NTC becomes important in view of the fact that it has been designated to support all e-government initiatives”, he said.

Earlier, the NTC chairman, Air Vice Marshal Azhar Maud, briefed the minister on the role, objective and future plans of the corporation. The corporation would increase the number of its subscribers to 200,000, he added.

The NTC chairman informed the minister that PAKSAT -1 has reached its orbital position and the corporation was setting up a team to handle all aspects of the project. For this purpose, telecom and marketing experts were being hired. Some professionals from the Suparco will also be included in the team.

The minister was also informed that besides extending telecommunication services to its designated customers, the NTC had undertaken some major project to support the e-governance initiative of the government.

The NTC’s multi-services data communication network costing Rs315 million will provide platform for all e-initiatives of the government including institutional internet for the ministries or departments and internet services to the government.

The project will also provide state-of-the-art technology for airing of television programmes of PTV.

Another project of the NTC is Pakistan Educational and Research Network (PERN) costing Rs29,846 million and will provide state-of-the art backbone to 56 universities in public and private sector.

Under the project, universities will be interconnected and also with institutions the world over to enable the students to access the sources of knowledge around the globe through internet and to standardize their respective curricula.

Since March 2000, the NTC has covered 28 cities installing 58 exchanges as against five cities and 20 exchanges in March 2000. It plans to cover another 14 cities by installing 28 more exchanges during 2002-03 and its network consists of 75,500 installed lines as against 45,506 in March 2000 which will be further expanded to 82,500 lines during 2003.