Calcutta Telephones’ Excel, relaunched on May 12, has notched up a sales figure of 10,000 cards.

“The response to the pre-paid mobile telephone service has been overwhelming,” admitted a senior CalTel official on Sunday. He claimed a bulk of Excel customers had migrated from private operators.

Officials said they were expecting a growing number of customers and were augmenting capacity to cope with the rush.

Excel was rolled out afresh on May 12 after installation of a new Ericsson switch. A handful of Excel cards had been distributed earlier, when C-Dot switches were in place. In October 2003, CalTel launched its post-paid mobile telephone service, CellOne. But Excel could not be launched in a big way then because of a radio capacity problem.

Initially, more than 8,000 Excel cards were sold through 17 of the 80 customer service centres of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, while 2,000 were given to distributor networks, officials said. Each of the customer services in the first three days handled between 150 and 600 pre-paid cards. Sources said the rush was maximum at the Tiretta Bazar telephone exchange.

CalTel is allowing public call office booth-owners to sell recharge coupons, too, but they will not be given the Sim cards.

CellOne’s present switch capacity is one lakh; the target is to raise it to 1.76 lakh by December.

Also, plans are afoot to raise the number of base transmission towers from the existing 87.

“Ericsson-associated towers are being installed at key locations and business hubs,” an official said.