Bharti launches Touchtel in Haryana

TouchTel-Haryana's first private basic telephone service was inaugurated by Om Prakash Chautala, CM, Haryana and Pramod Mahajan, Union Minister for Communications, IT and Parliamentary Affairs with an inaugural call to Sheila Dixit, CM, Delhi and a subsequent call to Kapil Dev, cricket star from Haryana. Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman and Group Managing Director, Bharti and other senior officials of BSNL and Bharti also attended the launch.

In the first phase, TouchTel will be available to consumers in Gurgaon and Faridabad. TouchTel has set up a network comprising two Multi Switching Units (MSU), 10 Remote Switching Unit (RSU), 11 Digital Line Unit (DLU) and more than 320-km of optical fiber and 420-km of copper. Bharti Televentures will also be laying a 320-km state-of-the-art OFC network across the state of Haryana.

The company has partnered with telecom companies like Siemens, Nortel, Cisco and Duraline for its network. While Siemens has provided the digital switching system (Siemens EWSD) with CCS-7, a signaling protocol for faster connectivity, the billing software (Keenan Arbor) has been sourced from Lucent.

TouchTel will offer telephone connection on-demand, quick and convenient billing and a range of value added services, high-speed data transmission facilities and 24-hour customer care. TouchTel tariffs, from registration charges to call unit rates, will be the same as DoT. Consumers can book their TouchTel connections for Rs 2000 as registration charge. The registration also includes a free voice mail facility and a free Internet connection. The free Internet connection will be given to customers registering before December 31, 2001 and would be valid till December 2002.

TouchTel's services for businesses would include high capacities and faster connectivity on leased lines, private leased circuits, dedicated ISDN services, VPN, Centrex services, Internet and web based value added services and convenience enhancing services like video conferencing, etc. TouchTel also plans to offer in the near future, a range of IN services like number translation services, alternate billing and charging, personal services and

VPN.

Sunil Mittal said that at present 5000 bookings in Gurgaon and 3000 bookings in Faridabad have already been made.

Replying to a question he added that basic services in Delhi will be operational in the beginning of February 2002.