Centre Backs Telangana's T-Fibre Loan Request

Union Minister of State for Rural Development and Communications, Dr. Pemmasani Chandra Sekhar, responded positively to Sridha Babu’s letter highlighting four key issues. The letter was submitted by the T-Fibre delegation led by Managing Director Venu Prasad Panneeru. According to Sridhar Babu, the State government opted to follow the ‘State-Led Implementation Model’ for implementing BharatNet Phase-II project.

The scope of T-Fiber project consists of connecting 10,787 Gram Panchayats (GPs) and its corresponding mandals, districts and setting up of state-of-the-art Network Operations Centre (NOC) at Hyderabad. The architecture of T-Fiber project is unique and most efficient from other BharatNet projects, wherein end-to-end connectivity is established from State Headquarters Office (SHO), Zonal Headquarters Office (ZHO), Block Headquarters Office (BHO) and GP in ring architecture with multiple redundancies.

From the State Headquarters (SHQ) to GP level, the Internet Protocol Multi-Protocol Label Switching (IP MPLS), Dense Wavelength-Division Multiplexing (DWDM) and Optical Add-Drop Multiplex (OADM) technology is implemented and Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) technology from GP to households is being followed for providing seamless internet connectivity to the rural population.

As on date, the project has been implemented in 8,872 GPs and 424 mandals along with establishment of Network Operations Centre (NOC) to monitor the network centrally and deliver the services. Sridhar Babu sought the support of Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) of Department of Telecommunications on handing over National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) phase-l executed by BBNL in the nine districts, (erstwhile Khammam, Nizamabad and Rangareddy) to have a unified and integrated network in the State.

He also urged the Union Minister to approve the DPR submitted to undertake the conversion of NOFN Phase-I network to BharatNet Phase-Ill architecture in addition to extending BharatNet Udyami incentive scheme to T-Fiber for enhancing the rural broadband proliferation.

He requested the Union Minister to extend a long term interest free loan of Rs.1779 crore to T-Fiber to avoid financial burden through loans already availed from Bank of Maharashtra at the rate of 9.4 per cent. Speaking to Deccan Chronicle from New Delhi, Venu Prasad said the Union Minister appreciated various works carried out by T-Fibre especially the Ring Architecture method adopted to ensure uninterrupted services to internet users. “We are hopeful of getting approvals from the Ministry for our requests at the earliest,” he added.