Gurgaon's Aksh Bags Rs 400 Crore AP Broadband Project; Aim To Offer 2,000 Kbps At Rs 100 per month
By Sanjay Sharma, Section Internet Service Providers
Posted on Mon Jan 03, 2005 at 08:08:09 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 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.
