I-T dept staff to get speedy with BlackBerry

NEW DELHI: The Income Tax department has struck an estimated Rs 50-crore deal with state-owned telecom company BSNL to provide 51,000 mobile connections and 1,000 high-end Blackberry phones for secure and fast communication among its officers and staff.

The department’s new telecom kitty, formulated to help I-T officials to enhance their speed of communication for official work, has a heavy shopping list with the joint network of BSNL and MTNL.

This provides for the supply of 51,000 mobile connections, 22,000 landline connections, 8,000 3G data cards with 5 GB download per month, 1,000 BlackBerry phones, 5,000 broadband connections and unlimited free SMS facility to the entire network of BSNL/MTNL. The department has provided the latest BlackBerry ‘torch’ model, sporting a price tag of around Rs 30,000 per piece, to all the chief commissioners and commissioners of income tax in the country to ensure fast monitoring of operations and activities of the department and keep secure all classified information exchanged between the top brass.