RailTel Corporation of India Ltd is set to offer Internet connectivity in trains on the move.

The fully owned telecom infrastructure development undertaking under the ministry of railways will soon tie up with a Canadian firm to provide the service.

State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd is also set to sign a pact with RailTel for bandwidth offtake.

Officials from RailTel said the testing of the new service has been successfully completed and subject to the approval of the Railway Board, RailTel will sign a MoU with the Canadian firm.

Without disclosing the Canadian firm's name, R C Sharma, managing director, RailTel said the first Internet connection on a train is likely to be provided in one of the Shatabdi trains. "This facility should be available in the next one year," Sharma said.

Speaking to media representatives in Chennai at the inauguration of the Network Operations Centre and the new support office in the city, Sharma said RailTel will be completing the laying of 40,000 km of optical fibre cable (OFC) across the country over three years at a cost of Rs 250,000 per km.

"The OFC laying work is in progress over a stretch of 28,000 km covering 3000 stations. The commercialisation or `lighting up of the fibre' is over 15,760 km is already completed."

The cable laying of the entire stretch of 64,000 km of Indian Railways network is expected to be completed by 2008. "Some of these will also be covered by copper cables," Sharma added.

"Except Reliance, all telecom players in India have taken bandwidth from our network. In future also cellular service providers, cable TV operators and private radio stations will be our major customers. Our trained manpower and secure bandwidth are two of our strengths that attracts most of our customers," he said.

RailTel, according to Sharma, is likely to break even by end of 2004-05. Investment till date has been of Rs 140 crore (Rs 1.40 billion).

"This investment does not reflect the magnitude of our network because assets in the form of OFC cables worth Rs 250 crore (Rs 2.50 billion) was given by the railways," Sharma clarified.

Earnings in the previous year was Rs 9.5 crore (Rs 95 million) and Sharma said RailTel has till end of October this year earned Rs 7.25 crore (Rs 72.5 million).

"We expect to close this year with Rs 30 crore (Rs 300 million) and have project a turnover of Rs 60 crore (Rs 600 million) for the next fiscal," he said.