Consortium
Bags Rs 400 Crore Andhra Pradesh Broadband Project; Aim To Offer 2,000
Kbps At Rs 100 pm
By Sanjay
Sharma, Section News
Posted on Mon Jan
3rd, 2005 at 08:17:41 PM EST
A consortium led by Gurgaon-based Aksh Broadband
Limited has been selected to implement the Rs 400-crore Andhra Pradesh
(AP) broadband project, which aims at extending broadband services to each
and every village of the state in the next two years. The other companies
in the consortium include Railtel Corporation India Limited, Tata Indicom,
VSNL Limited, INcable Network (Andhra) Limited, Spectranet Limited and
Nuziveedu Seeds Limited. The AP state cabinet that met in Hyderabad has
approved the finalisation of the project. The execution of the project is
scheduled to begin in April 2005 and will be completed by December 2006.
- The project, once completed, is expected to give a stiff competition
to other broadband service providers, including the BSNL, as the
promoters have indicated to charge just Rs 100 (around US $ 2.30) a
month for a domestic broadband connection.
- The project will provide services with a minimum bandwidth of
2,000 kbps, which is almost eight times higher, as compared to the
bandwidth offered by the BSNL.
- The network will also enable the rural folk to access
video-conferencing, internet surfing among other facilities.
The
broadband project will connect the state headquarter with 10 Gbps to each
of the district headquarters, one Gbps to each of the 1,127 mandal
headquarters and 100 Mbps to each of the villages. The network will have
optic fibre connectivity right up to the village level. Among other
customers, the proposed broadband network will provide broadband services
to 40,000 government offices across the state. This will enable the
government departments to deliver various citizen services through eSeva
centres, Rajiv Internet Village Kiosks and web-based online services.
(295 words in story) Full Story
