Telecom Department creates committee to oversee NBN ( National Optic Fibre Network) deployment

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has formed an eight-member expert committee to oversee the implementation of the National Optic Fibre Network (NOFN) project to accelerate the project and connect all gram panchayats by December 2016.

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The NOFN project was approved by the cabinet in October 2011. It was expected to be completed within two years. Then, the project cost was estimated to be Rs 20,000 crore, which has now escalated to Rs 35,000 crores, said a senior official in the department of telecommunications.

The target is to provide connectivity to all the 250,000 gram panchayats in India by December 2016, by using the existing optical fibre and extending it to the all the gram panchayats.

The committee comprises J Satyanarayana, former secretary, DeitY; Kiran Karnik, former president, NASSCOM; Som Mittal, former president, NASSCOM; Rajat Moona, Director, CDAC New Delhi; Prof S Sadagopan, Director, IIIT Bangalore; Anil Bhargava, member – Incharge (Technology), DoT; Aruna Sundararajan, Administrator, USO Fund; and V Umashankar, joint secretary, DoT.

The committee will recommend suitable technology options for faster implementation of the project. It will also assess relevant business models for effective use of bandwidth created under NOFN.

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