Mr. Chirag Mehta getting in the business of being the first.

The awareness of the Internet is taking grounds all over the country, thanks to the Prime Ministers National IT Task Force. The IT Taskforce is revamping the whole telecommunication system in the country by taking various measures including scraping out of over an 100 year old Indian Telegraph Act, which would never have happened in such a bureaucratic approach of DOT, if at all it was given this responsibility.

In the wake of the recent Privatisation of the Internet industry and opening up of this sector to private players, Gujarat has got its first private ISP licence. Cheers to Mr. Chirag Mehta, managing director, ICENET who bagged the tittle of becoming the first company to get the licence for the State. Flashing in the news across the state, he asserted on the most important aspect for the subscriber that access ability will not be a problem for the subscribers of the company as they won’t allow more than 10 customers per telephone line.

He said that while VSNL is dependent on analog technology, ICENET would use the latest digital technology. ICENET is not limiting its role as a dial-up service provider, but will offer other value-added services on the internet like Web Page designing and hosting in India, Internet banking, virtual shopping malls, educational services, local community news and other E-commerce solutions for the Internet.

He said that ICENET will have it's own integral gateway and servers in Ahmedabad, whereas Wilnet and Bahul Technologies have their servers in Mumbai (so what they shall soon have it in ahmedabad.) The company would tie up with multinational gateway providers like Worldcom, MCI, UUNnet or Sprint.

Negotiations in this regard are on and lCENET should start services by New Year. Besides this, ICENET will also tie up with VSNL for local gateway. Moreover, the services will be sub-let to open Net shops and cyber cafes throughout the State on a lease basis. Remote Access Servers will be provided to the franchisees too. Competitive rates will be charged from the users and that’s what we Netizens have to see what Icy pricing does ICENET has in store for us. At the moment, VSNL is charging in three slabs: Rs 3,000 for 100 hours or one year, Rs 6,500 for 250 hours or one year and Rs 10,000 for 500 hours or one year. The rates will become more competitive after major national players like Reliance, Satyam lnfoway and Bharati Telecom enter the market, he said.