State-owned BSNL the 5th largest telecom operator by subscriber base in India has been on a spree to revive its troubled operations by resorting to various means like surrendering its excess CDMA and BWA spectrum for a refund from the government. The telecom minister has also been giving incentives for the revival of MTNL and BSNL like cancelling of call termination charges for landlines. BSNL had recently announced that it would be signing a network sharing deal with Bharti Airtel for Pan India 2G ICRA to improve its coverage in urban areas.
Now they have gone a step further as TT has learned from its internal sources that BSNL has partnered with Google for setting up Google Global Cache (GGC) Servers in various telecom circles to improve the Internet experience for its subscribers. Google is providing the servers for free to BSNL along with the software technology for caching while BSNL is bearing the expenses of place and physical installation of the servers including the air conditioning, electric supply, upstream connection and operating expense.
What exactly are GGC servers and what is their significance?
Google Global Cache (GGC) represents the final tier of Google’s content delivery platform and acts as an intermediary between an internet user and Google’s data centre. With GGC, network operators and Internet Service Providers deploy a small number of Google servers inside their network to serve popular Google content, including YouTube. Google's traffic management system directs users to the node that will provide the best performance for the user.
GGC can be located anywhere in an operator's network to maximize savings in backbone and transit bandwidth. Targeted deployment can reduce the number of route miles travelled on an operator's network to serve Google traffic through the cached content rather than having to be routed all the way to Google’s data centre, further increasing cost savings for the operator.
Since around 40% of the total internet traffic of BSNL is towards Google, hence installation of GGC servers in BSNL broadband network will provide a better browsing experience to the users and also reduce the congestion on BSNL’s network at various levels.
Where in India are the GGC servers being installed by BSNL?
As of now there has been an agreement between BSNL and Google for setting up the GGC servers in 14 locations. In Tamil Nadu circle at Chennai (2 servers), in Karnataka circle at Bangalore, in Andhra Pradesh circle at Hyderabad, in Kerala circle at Ernakulum, in Maharashtra circle at Nagpur, in Gujarat circle at Ahmedabad, in Rajasthan circle at Jaipur, in Madhya Pradesh circle at Indore, in UP East circle at Lucknow, in Punjab circle at Chandigarh, in Delhi circle, in Bihar circle at Patna and in Kolkata circle. The servers have been received by BSNL for 11 of these locations and the three servers for Lucknow, Patna and Kolkata are expected to be delivered by Google soon.
