Telecom and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad today commissioned India’s first 100 Mbps rural broadband network (NOFN) in Idukki district of Kerala.

The investment in Idukki will be around Rs 3.76 crore.

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Idukki district has 8 Block Offices & 53 Gram Panchayats of which 8 Block Offices and 52 Grama Panchayats have been connected with NOFN.

As part of inauguration, Ravi Shankar Prasad received the first mobile phone call ever from the Gram Panchayat of Edamalakuddy in Idukki district. This Gram Panchayat is 34 kms away from the nearest town and has no road connectivity, electricity or piped water.

The India government, as part of its Digital India program, will be using existing fiber spanning 803.3 km. Incremental duct length  for Idukki district will be 55.7 km

The state-run telecom operator BSNL is taking care the NOFN implementation in Kerala. BSNL completed the survey, and once the incremental fiber of about 1000 Km is laid, and the network is in place, the bandwidth to each Gram Panchayat will increase many fold and e-applications can run.

In Kerala state, existing fiber to be used will be 7716.85 Km. Incremental Duct Length will be 59.190 km of which 35.954 km has been completed.

Total estimated cost for Kerala NOFN project will be Rs 72 crore. This is primarily because of the government will be using the existing fiber.

NOFN is set to link 600 million rural citizens of India across 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayats of India spread over 6600 blocks and 631 districts through broadband optical fiber network.

NOFN will boost delivery of e-governance, e-health, e-education, e-banking, public internet access, G2C, B2B, P2P, B2C etc., weather, agricultural  and other services to rural India.

Rakesh Garg, secretary, Department of Telecommunications, said: “India is gearing up for the digital age through the undertaking of the NOFN which will usher in a new era of good governance and inclusive development.”

3 PSUs including BSNL, PGCIL and Railtel are implementing NOFN in the phase first. Bharat Broad Band Nigam (BBNL) will centrally manage the project through a high capacity Network Management System being developed by C-DOT.

The government is looking to cover 50,000 GPs in the first phase NOFN, with the balance 2,00,000 GPs expected to be covered in a phased manner by 2016.

Baburajan K
[email protected]