MTNL cellular tariff announced
Mumbai: Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd. (MTNL) will charge Rs 1.50 per minute for incoming telephone calls and Rs 2.70 per minute for outgoing calls on its proposed cellular service, Mr. Ram Vilas Paswan, union communications minister has announced.

The monthly rental charge is being fixed at Rs 400. MTNL will also offer a free voice mail service through a secret number, which will be given to each customer.

MTNL is planning to offer one lakh connections in the first phase of the operations. The capacity would be enhanced to three lakh connections in the next phase. One-third of the connections will be reserved for women in Delhi, where the service is to be launched on January 31. MTNL has said that it will not offer free mobile services during the night.

The major offerings from MTNL include 2.5G services, local broadcast, and short messages and voice mail. It is also planning to set up 50,000 wireless in local loop lines using CDMA technology in Mumbai, sourcing required equipment and other technology from Fujitsu of Japan.
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CSO revises index of industrial production
New Delhi: Barely ten months after the release of the Economic survey 1999-2000, the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) has once again revised the industrial growth data for the period 1994-99. The central monitoring agency says that the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) was being revised to weed out items, which were leading to massive fluctuations.

The dropped items included radio receivers, photosensitised paper, chassis (assembly) for HCVs (bus, truck) and engines. CSO explained that these items were being dropped as they were being reported by ``single producers'' and were prone to significant month to month variations, leading to extreme fluctuations in monthly indices/growth pattern especially during November 1999-March 2000.''

It also stated that the deletion of the four items had a negligible impact on the growth rates for the years 1994-95 to 1997-98. As a result of these changes, the IIP based on sector growth showed a 6.5 per cent growth in November and 6 per cent higher growth in April-November as compared to the last year.
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MAIT scales down its PC sales target
New Delhi: The Manufacturers Association for Information Technology (Mait) has scaled down its sales projections for personal computers from 19 lakh units to 17.4 lakh units for 2000-01, following a down turn in PC sales.

In a mid-year industry performance review, the association has said that the desktop PC market registered a year-to-year growth of only 26 per cent in the first half of 2000-01 compared with 37 per cent in 1999-00. The report says that low PC penetration, coupled with expanding Internet has led to a search for alternate devices.

The Mait report said assembled PCs increased their share to 59 per cent from 57 per cent while multinationals gained market share in the first half of 2000-01, moving up to 24 per cent from 21 per cent in the corresponding period last year. Share of the Indian brands, went down to 17 per cent from 21.

The report notes that networking market has seen an impressive growth with over 4.4 lakh NIC (network interface cards), over 80,000 hubs and 3.23 lakh modems sold in first half of 2000-01, registering a growth of 26 per cent, 36 per cent and 51 per cent, respectively. The report puts the total sales of personal computers in the financial year 1999-2000 (April-March) totaled 1.4 million units.
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