New Delhi, Oct. 4: Cellular telephony will be possible from the Siachen glacier shortly with the army commissioning an optical fibre network codenamed Mercury Streak tomorrow.

Even as foreign minister K. Natwar Singh and his Pakistan counterpart Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri discuss the options for a pull-back of troops from the glacier, the Indian Army is building upon its existing linkages with one of the remotest and most disputed parts of the country.

Mercury Streak will provide broadband converged communication facilities to troops and also civilians.

The network has been in the making for three years and is involved in a collaboration among the Signal Corps, the BSNL and the Border Roads Organisation.

The army’s Signal Corps claims that the network is secure, “immune to eavesdropping, jamming and electromagnetic radiations”.

The commissioning of Mercury Streak ? likely by IT and communications minister Dayanidhi Maran tomorrow ? will be just another signal from the army at a time of confidence-building measures that it does not favour a compromise on the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir or the actual ground position line in Siachen without troop positions being demarcated.

In a briefing to the security establishment, the military operations directorate has conveyed that authentication of positions along the Saltoro Ridge is a must for an international acknowledgement of army posts in the region that Pakistan disputes.

A brainchild of the army’s signals officer in chief, Lt General Davinder Kumar, Mercury Streak is an optical fibre network connecting the Kashmir Valley through Kargil to Leh.