To provide last mile connectivity in internet services, the government has decided to seek the help of private sector. The PMO (prime minister’s office) has decided to bring in the private sector for laying down optical fibre network in the country under national optical fibre network (NOFN) project.

The NOFN aims to provide optical fibre connectivity to 2.5 lakh panchayats and is considered as the backbone of prime minister’s ambitious Digital India programme.

The first set of 50,000 gram panchayats will be provided with high-speed internet connectivity only later this year, informed Aruna Sundararajan, administrator, universal service obligation fund (USOF), and chairman of Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL).

“The PMO has formed a high level committee which will take a comprehensive look at NOFN’s architecture and design, implementation strategy, mission framework and technology options for last mile,” Sundararajan said.  The committee will submit its report by end of February, she added.

The PMO had initially set a phase-wise rollout target for NOFN. As per the plan, first half lakh panchayats were to be connected by March, another one lakh by end of this year and remaining one lakh by end of 2016.

The deadline set by PMO seems over ambitious, Sundararajan said, while speaking at India Digital summit, organized here by IAMAI (internet and mobile association of India). 

By March- April, Sundararajan said, most of districts of Kerala and 30 districts of Karnataka will be connected to NOFN. On January 12communications and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had launched Idukki as the first district to be entirely connected to NOFN. At present, 1,600 panchayats are connected to optical fibre cable.

NOFN is not a complex project in terms of technology but given the scale of implementation, it can’t be done over night. The pace of implementation, however, has been accelerated considerably in last couple of months, said Sundararajan.

On reasons behind the delay in the rollout, Sundararajan said the field survey related to locating fibre and drawing the map for laying out fibre from blocks to panchayats took one and half year. Development of electronics for NOFN also took a year. Since the electricity supply is inadequate in rural areas, the electronics have to be robust enough to work in that environment, she said.

She admitted that there were gaps in fibre connectivity between block and district. Initially, according to other DOT officials, it was assumed that upstream fibre connectivity (between block and district) is in place. The fibre cable between district and block was laid out some years back and the electronics hardware being used in this network has become obsolete and needs to be replaced.

Wireless and radio- an alternative for few areas
Due to geographical terrain it might not be possible to lay out optical fibre cable in some parts of the country. So other solutions including wireless and radio have to be explored. “We can’t wait for the cable to be laid out; we have to provide connectivity in some form to the people in the meanwhile,” Sundararajan told the gathering of techies and entrepreneurs related to internet economy present in the summit.

Private sector to help
The PMO has also decided to bring in the private sector for laying down the fibre. The contracting work will be done soon, she said.

For last mile connectivity, an expression of interest will be drafted for every state. The service providers will have to do at least one pilot per state. She said by end of this year the government will have a robust last mile model for the whole country. The government will also look at viability issues with delivering the last mile connectivity.

The government might also provide for a ‘publicly funded Wi-Fi hot spots’ across all village panchayats, Sundararajan said.