TORRURU (RANGA REDDY DT.): In just two months, each of the 12 municipalities, 37 mandals, 705 gram panchayats and 1,200 revenue villages in Ranga Reddy district will boast of broadband connectivity, with optical fibre cables (OFC) carrying voice, data and video signals at high speeds.

The chairman of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Pradeep Baijal, visited this village on Monday and saw for himself the speed with which the imported plough laid a 3.8 mm cable and its 12 mm duct, a metre below the ground. He said Andhra Pradesh was poised to be number one in broadband connectivity, offering speeds of 10 gigabytes per second (gbps) up to each of the 24 district headquarters, 1 gbps up to 1,127 mandal headquarters and 100 mbps up to village level.

The Rs. 394-crore Aksh Broadband Project has as stakeholder, the Andhra Pradesh Technology Services (APTS), which invested Rs. 25 crores. It envisages laying of one lakh kilometres of OFC, connecting 22,000 villages, including 40,000 Government offices, apart from every other user. It will enable delivery of citizen services through eSeva centres and Rajiv Internet Village Kiosks. All district headquarters will be connected in 28 weeks, under phase one of the project taken up by Gurgaon-based Aksh Broadband Limited (ABL) that claims to be India's "first three-in-one communication - cable television, voice over internet protocol and Internet -- through ultra-thin cables. The second phase will cover all mandals in 45 weeks and in phase three, every village will be OFC-linked in 65 weeks. The project comes with high expectations since the promoters indicate tariffs of just Rs. 100 a month for domestic connection. ABL is a consortium including INcable Network (Andhra) Ltd, Spectranet Ltd and Nuziveedu Seeds Ltd.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail