Calcutta, April 12: The Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) may not be able to meet the June deadline to start mobile reservation services in Delhi.

IRCTC sources said the response from GSM service providers has been lukewarm and they are yet to discuss the issue of integrating with the remote booking system. Reminder letters had been despatched to the four GSM operators in Delhi — AirTel, Hutch, Idea and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL).

“At present, remuneration from the GPRS service is low and GSM operators are not keen to invest in building the network and infrastructure,” said an IRCTC official. “On the other hand, Reliance has shown interest and is likely to start a test run next month. It is likely that we will start with only one service provider,” he added.

According to the Indian Cellular Association (ICA), there are around 4 million GPRS handsets and 6 million CDMA phones in use. Of the GPRS subscribers, not many use their handsets to access online services.

Amitabh Pandey, IRCTC group general manager (IT services), however, said the company is working on the integration and expects to start services in two months. The facility will be extended to the rest of the country after studying the response in the capital.

“Not many successful examples of m-commerce can be cited. It remains to be seen whether users are ready to make deals over the phone. Also, it is cumbersome to view the browser on a smaller screen and type out details on the keypad,” he added.

On the other hand, online reservations through the IRCTC website is on the upswing and 1,04,167 tickets were booked in March against 50,000 in the year-ago period. “This year, we are confident of boosting daily online transactions from an average of Rs 10 crore to Rs 20 crore,” said Pandey.