Andhra Pradesh: Ambitious fiber net struggling to expand

Vijaywada: Andhra Pradesh State Fiber Net Limited has been struggling to expand in the cable network. They have achieved only 88,000 connections against the target set by Chief Minister Mr Chandrababu Naidu of 5 lakhs before the month of December 2017. This is the picture shown on paper, but in the field, the State Fiber Net has been embroiled in myriad difficulties.

For instance, they started a pilot project in Mory village near Rajahumundry on December 29, 2016. There they faced some technical problems regarding laying of fibre lines etc. Afterwards, they started giving connections slowly for seven months.To begin with, they concentrated on the rural pockets. Initially, they faced a problem of box costs. Then they found it hard to deal with local cable operators and now the problem of lack of boxes has cropped up.

A box costs Rs 4,000, which has been rejected by consumers. Then after consultation with the APSFL, the government decided to give the boxes on an EMI basis. They plan to provide two boxes for the TV and Net with 250 channels and start the tariff at Rs 149 which would  later vary with the Net Speed and Limit. The game players, local cable operators, who are holding lakhs of connections in their grasp, have become a hurdle to the APSFL. Dealing with them and supplying sufficient boxes to them is another headache.

Mr Radhakrishna, COO of APSFL has explained that they are trying to merge all cable operators and are even offering outsourcing services to other providers. Presently, five companies are supplying boxes to the APSFL. Terrasoft, MCBS, Dason, Corpus and Yaga Technologies are supplying  material to the APSFL. But the state fibre net is not getting sufficient boxes, as they are getting only 10,000 boxes per week.