Having exhausted the existing capacity in the pre-paid card category within six months of its launch, state owned Mahanagar Telephone Nigam will increase the capacity by 125,000 lines each in Delhi and Mumbai by end of this month.

"By February 1, the additional capacity will come into effect in both the metros. Currently the capacity is being added only in the pre-paid card (Trump) segment," MTNL chairman and managing director Narinder Sharma said.

The corporation has also planned to add the capacity by 400,000 lines in the two metros by the end of 2003 and would be investing up to Rs 500 crore (Rs 5 billion) for the purpose.

Sharma said that the entire investment would be funded from internal resources.

He, however said there was no plan to revise the cellular tariffs further as MTNL's tariffs were the lowest in the market. He also said that network optimisation was almost complete and the quality of services was satisfactory.

On the Wireless in Local Loop based limited mobility services offered by the corporation on its basic telecom network, Sharma said by April, 50 additional base stations were being added, which would provide mobility in Delhi.

Asked about the financial impact of recent cut in the mobile-to-mobile STD tariffs, Sharma said there would certainly be some revenue loss but hoped that the loss caused due to lower tariffs would be compensated to a large extent by increase in the traffic.