Union minister for communication and information technology (C&IT), Kapil Sibal launched the Logo and website of national knowledge network (NKN) yesterday. While inaugurating the website the minister mentioned that NKN is a significant step towards ushering a knowledge revolution in the country and poses a challenge to the ways we think and work. Technology is enabler but efforts beyond that are required to inform, educate and empower people of the country, Sibal said.

Speaking from Chicago through video conferencing, Sam Pitroda, advisor to the prime minister on public information  infrastructure and innovations appreciated and thanked the entire team for making the NKN possible in a very short period. He emphasised the need to take fibre based connectivity to all the 2,50,000 panchayats and all the municipalities in the country.

Later speaking on the occasion, Sachin Pilot MoS for C&IT said in this era of Information Communication Technology (ICT) influencing every life NKN will enable Indians to reach new heights. The Government’s endeavour is that with best IT infrastructure India must keep an edge over the world to be the super power in the field of Information Technology. This NKN will equip young Indians to face the global challenges in the times to come.
Dr. R. Chidambaram, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India and Chairperson of the NKN High Level Committee made an interactive presentation demonstrating how the NKN will connect various stakeholders. Representatives from IIT  Indore, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Guwahati, IIT Madras, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, CSIR , Ministry of Earth Sciences and BARC participated in the live interaction .
Speaking on the occasion, the secretary, S.K. Sharma, Department of Information Technology said that the NKN will transform the knowledge landscape of the country.
National Knowledge Network (NKN) envisages connecting all higher centres of learning and research by bringing together all stakeholders from science, technology, higher education, healthcare, agriculture and governance to a common platform.  Initially, the decision to set up NKN was announced in 2008-09 with an allocation of Rs.100 crore to the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and IT. The implementation of NKN is currently underway and aims to accomplish connectivity to approximately 550+ institutions across the country by March, 2011.
In Phase-I, the Service Providers are connecting the NKN Points of Presence (PoPs) with 2.5Gigabits bandwidth links. The bandwidth of these PoP’s shall be enhanced from 2.5G to 10G in the next year. So far, 76 links for the creation of the backbone for NKN project have been established. Also, connectivity with 200 edge links for various institutions has been accomplished.