"It is our endeavour to start cellular services during first half of next year in at least some of the places," PS Saran, secretary, DTS

PS Saran,

member (services), Telecom Commission has been appointed as

the first secretary of the newly created Department of Telecom

Services (DTS). Considered as a step forward in the corporatization

of Department of Telecom (DoT), DTS will have under its purview

all the service-related functions and 90 percent of the existing

DoT workforce. What should be expected of DTS? How will this

move help in creating a new customer friendly image for the

telecom services? Saran spells out his agenda in a nutshell.

How is

DTS different from DoT?



The National Telecom Policy 1999 clearly spelt out that the
services arm of DoT should be separated and corporatized. As

the interim measure, the idea was to have a separate department,

which should exclusively be looking after planning, management,

development, HRD issues of services segment. DTS is the result

of that. All the service PSUs will also be under DTS. ITI and

HTL seem to be hesitant...

According

to the initial document these two PSUs were also expected to

be under DTS. But, of late, it is being thought that these manufacturing

units should remain under DoT for better management. Only services

units should be a part of DTS. What is your personal opinion?



I do not see any debate here and have no objections in letting

these units remaining under DoT.

How do

you see the DTS structure evolving in near future?



DTS is a separate department and as happens with any new department,
here too, some streamlining needs to be done. But eventually

as per the NTP '99 this arm of services provisioning has to

be corporatized and the target set is 2001. Next year onwards,

there will be a separate budget for DTS and the majority of

the staff (approximately four lakh), has to come under DTS purview.

What

are your immediate priorities?



DTS has to register a higher growth. We have been growing at
22 percent per annum. Last year we provided 3.8 million telephones.

This year we plan to add 4.55 million telephones and next year

this number should increase to 5.4 to 5.5 million.

Also by

26 January next year we intend to put an Internet node in all

secondary switching centres and Internet service will be available

in all the districts. Besides, it is our endeavour to start

cellular services during first half of next year in at least

some of the places.

Other areas,

which are of immediate importance, include connectivity in rural

areas and customer services. A committee for development of

rural telephony under the chairmanship of Tapan Sikdar, minister

of state for communications has been formed.

On the customer

front, a massive improvement is planned. It includes orientation

training of our customer-end staff, pagers-to-line personnel

in all state capital, etc.

You are

both in DTS and the Telecom Commision. Won't there be a role

clash?



It's true now I wear two hats. But the majority of my work will
be as secretary of DTSs