A public sector unit promoted by the Government of West Bengal, Webel Communications started production in Jan.'89 to manufacture 2 lac push button telephones with technology from Siemens, Germany, and 35,000 lines EPABX in collaboration with Jeumont Schnoider, France. Its manufacturing facilities are located at the Salt Lake Electronics Complex, Calcutta. Under-utilisation of production capacity due to lack of adequate orders from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (MTNL), pushed the company into red and was referred to the BIFR in 1993-94 as a sick company. Its reference was treated as non-maintainable by the BIFR on technical grounds. However, it directed the financial intstitutions to provide survival plan for the company with the support of the banks. Accordingly, in 1994-95, the company started implementing the rehabilitation package drawn up by ICICI, the lead financial institution. In 1993-94, the company proposed to broad-base its product range to include feature phones, speaker phones, answering phones and cordless phones by both manufacturing and trading. In 1995-96, the company diversified into the field of digital multiplexers based on C-Dot technology, to save itself from the unhealthy competition in the area of electronic push button telephones (EPBTs), and secured an order for Rs 1.08 cr. However, even before a single unit could be delivered, the unit price per unit crashed. The Production and Sales of EPBT during the year 1997-98, were 1,34,341 Nos and 1,34,374 Nos. as against 4600 Nos. and 4679 Nos. respectively in the previous year. The invoice value for the year stood at Rs.587.25 lacs as against Rs.34.63 lacs in the prevoius year. During the year 1998-99, the company has successfully completed the full quantity order received from DOT. The company has developed a New Model of EPBT MK-III which is cost effective and would overcome the situation occurred for the lower sale price.