Editorial – Jun 2015

The Modi government has consigned UPA government’s flagship project – National Optical Fiber Network (NOFN) – to dustbin. It has announced a new project BharatNet, which would have much wider coverage & reliability at much lower cost. It is now envisaged to be implemented mostly through public private partnerships, with equal equity partnerships from the government and the private sectors.

The earlier project (NOFN) envisaged providing digital coverage to 250,000 panchayats (GPs) through just single fiber from block headquarters (BHQ) to GPs and two fibers from district headquarters (DHQ) to BHQ. This would have restricted the usage and also the network quality.

But, under BharatNet, the number of fibers have gone up substantially, 4/8 fiber and 48/96 fiber, respectively. Besides, fiber loops are also envisaged, both at BHQ level and also at GP level, which will substantially reduce the possibility of any downtime. This has raised the cable laying manifold – from about 6 lakh km in NOFN to over 17 lakh km in BharatNet.

But strangely, despite the above stated additions, the project cost has come down. This has become possible as the government has envisaged selling of extra / spare capacities of fibers to various other operators who would need them for their own use.

Originally planned to be commissioned in three years after the cabinet approved it in August 2011, the NOFN is far away from its targets. The project has skipped many deadlines. The new deadline is 2016, but even as on date only a few GPs have been covered.

BharatNet will be planned afresh but it is targeted to be commissioned by June 2017. Please read our cover story to know full details.

While attempting to do a story on ITI revival, by chance we came across a serious issue of land scam. Two past CMDs of the company had attempted to dispose-off ITI’s land at prime location in Bangalore at throw away price, to a private party. For some unknown reasons, its sale was held up during DMK ministers’ tenure in UPA-1 & 2 periods. But the proposed sale was turned down by Kapil Sibal who took over the charge of telecom ministry from the 2G scam tainted A Raja. Later BIFR also declined the sale. Besides, now the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has shown the door to the incumbent CMD. This will send a strong signal to all those who are into corrupt practices. In our lead story, we have covered this issue in detail.