New Delhi, Aug. 19 : The Union communications ministry has directed its officials to speed up the construction of a Rs 70-crore national internet backbone network to tap the revenues from internet telephony and meet the growing competition in the sector from private players. The national internet backbone will provide access points to Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and other private internet service providers (ISPs). The NIB will be the transmission media to carry internet traffic to the international gateway and will also act as a facilitator for ISP-to-ISP interconnection within the country. Initially, this backbone will have a capacity of 8 megabits per second, which will go up to 155 mbps. Six nodes have international gateway connectivity at 34 mbps. The NIB will also be connected to all secondary switching areas (SSAs). 'The emergence of internet telephony has improved the viability of the NIB project. We will be able to finish the project by 2005 and have already completed its first phase. In the second phase, we will undertake capacity augmentation and introduce additional security and network management features,' said a Telecom Commission member in the communications ministry. At its weekly meeting, the Telecom Commission decided to focus on the development of the second and third phases. 'About Rs 33.45 crore has already been spent in the first phase and a similar amount is expected to be invested in the second phase. The NIB is planned as a three-tier structure. The first tier consists of 14 large stations connected by high capacity digital trunks. The second tier consists of 31 stations which are expected to be installed. The third tier will have more than 500 nodes that will be connected to the main network. BSNL plans to launch its internet telephony services soon and the NIB will be important for inter-connectivity with the other ISPs and also to offer low-cost calls to the US and other countries. Last month, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd had launched its internet telephony service offering calls to the US at Rs 4.95 per minute as against Rs 24 offered by international long distance operators. In internet telephony, the internet network is used in place of a dedicated and managed telephone network based on transmission control protocol/internet protocol (TCP/IP) to offer voice, fax and related services.