BSNL is targeting 40,000 Fibre to the Home (FTTH) customers this fiscal, of which 16,000 customers are to be from state's commercial capital Kochi, a top official said on Saturday.

Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode are the other cities in Kerala being targeted by the telecom provider to offer the advanced Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) customer service.

Already about 100 connections have been given at Kochi and after the rains more optical fibre cables would be laid to provide more connections, Dr P T Mathew, Principal General Manager, Ernakulam SSA, told reporters.

This would provide bandwidth of 100 Mbps against the normal 2 Mbps, he said. Voice, Data and Video (tiple ply) services would be available simultaneously besides services like Internet Telephony (VOIP) and video conferencing.

Kochi city has Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) services available under 35 telephone exchanges. BSNL is introducing 510 GPON ports for Greater Cochin area from which 32 connections can be given at a time, he said.

Demand has come in from industrial units and owners of New flats for the GPON service.WIMAX service is being provided in 79 towns in Ernakulam SSA.

To popularise the new services such as GPON and WIMAX (Wireless broad band) among the public, a publicity vehicle has been launched by BSNL which would be visiting different parts of Ernakulam and Idukki districts.

A new broadband network linking 400 universities affiliated to colleges and Polytechnics in the country is also underway in the state,

In Kerala all the 16 universities would be linked and in Ernakulam district alone 150 colleges would be connected to the network, he said.
BSNL has also reduced tariff rates for India Telephone Card customers besides making drastic changes in pre-paid mobile tariff.