Bouyed by the success of its Cellone service, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited on Thursday said it had set a target of rolling out one crore (10 million) mobile telephone connections in the country for which work would begin from April next year.

BSNL chairman-cum-managing director Pritpal Singh told reporters in Srinagar that the state-run telephone service provider would roll out another 25 lakh (2.5 million) connections by the end of the current financial year, which would also help expand subscriber base in Jammu and Kashmir.

"We are improving the infrastructure to cover 800 important towns," Singh said.

He said BSNL was also in the process of improving the services provided to the customers by way of value addition.

The customers will not only be able to access voice telephone but data services as well, he said, adding infrastructure for the purpose had already been tested and the services would be implemented in near future.

Singh said BSNL, which has marked a 100 per cent increase in subscriber base in the past four years and registered 36 lakh (3.6 million) mobile subscribers since October last year, would soon introduce short message service facility on the fixed lines.