 "BSNL dreams big; all villages to be telecom linked by 2014")
With a view to establishing telecom links in villages across the nation, BSNL is reportedly working on an ambitious project that will create a ‘National Optical Fibre Network’ (NOFN) to provide Internet and other telecommunications connectivity; only doing so will cost them a whopping Rs.20,000 crores. Reportedly, BSNL will also be working at improving the telecommunications connectivity in the northeastern region. It plans to do so by upgrading the existing Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) network and by hiring PGCIL (Power Grid Corporation of India Limited) and RailTel cable network. “The Rs 20,000 crore project for the creation of a ‘National Optical Fibre Network’ (NOFN) for providing internet and other telecommunications connectivity to villages has been launched recently. It would be completed by the next two years. Once the NOFN was created, it would help in offering governance, banking and health and other basic services online up to the villages and rural areas,” BSNL CMD R.K. Upadhyaya told reporters.
BSNL wants to go places
On employing National Optical Fibre Network, the teledensity in the rural areas would increase to a great extent, which is said to be only 37 percent, currently. BSNL is said to have created OFC from Kolkata to Dhaka in Bangladesh and the network would be further extended up to northeastern states in the near future through Bangladesh. BSNL is said to have OFC network with some European countries, Nepal, Myanmar and also Bhutan.
“BSNL accounts to 80 percent of landline and 90 percent of broadband connections in the country, while around 30 percent of the nation’s mobile connections are covered by BSNL,” he adds. Recently, BSNL has been in the news, for its ventures into the tablet space. It decided to craft tablets to compete with the popular, low-cost Aakash tablet. As the BSNL-Pantel Technologies partnership went public, in no time the BSNL tablet received over a lakh pre-orders and the specs of the tablet look alluring as well.
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