CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu is set to witness a digital revolution with the State planning to lay optic fibre network across the State along with BharatNet, the Union government’s rural connectivity broadband project.
A top Information Technology department official told Express that the `1,500-crore project, set to be implemented after getting due approval, would connect the rural areas of Tamil Nadu with the world. The network will link the entire government offices of the State and will be made available to private sector also.
Once the network is expectantly laid in two years, it will be the digital expressway to the world. “The speed of network will be one gigabyte per second (1GBPS) which is extraordinary. All villages in the state will be covered,” said the official.
Under the project, the rural part of Tamil Nadu will be covered by BharatNet and the urban part of the State will be covered by Tamil Nadu FibreNet Corporation.
“Once the project is implemented, it will ensure adequate bandwidth for the next 20 years. Now villagers who don’t have adequate bandwidth will be able to browse the Net with high-speed network,” said the official.
“The implementation of the network will result in providing e-services, e-commerce and e-knowledge to rural areas. It will not only bridge the digital divide but will also transform the entire rural areas of the state providing them with a window to the world,” the official said.
“The end users of this network are the government ministries and departments and the network will be used for various citizen-centric services also,” the official said.
“The state government has already launched an online portal and all services will be migrated to the online portal so that people can easily access it,” he said.
“We have also launched Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance (UMANG)” the official said.
UMANG intends to provide major services offered by the Central and State government departments, local bodies and other utility services. It provides a unified approach where citizens can install one application to avail multiple government services. Keeping in view the government’s aim to provide affordable digital services in rural areas, the tariffs for utilising the optic fibre network are yet to be worked out,” the official said. It is learnt Arasu Cable has tied up with BharatNet to use fibre network bandwidth for its subsided connections.
Expressway to bring people closer
Once the network is expectantly laid in two years, it will be the digital expressway to the world. “The speed of network will be one gigabyte per second (1GBPS) which is extraordinary. All villages in the state will be covered,” said an official
Factfile
Rs 1500 crore
TN to lay optic fibre network for entire State at a cost of around
Under the project, the rural part of Tamil Nadu will be covered by Bharatnet and the urban part of the state by Tamil Nadu FibreNet Corporation.
20 years
Once the project is implemented it will ensure adequate bandwidth for the next 20 years for entire Tamil Nadu
The speed of the network will be one gigabyte per second (1GBPS) which is extraordinary
The implementation of the network will result in providing e-services, e-commerce and e-knowledge to rural areas