New Delhi, January 27 2014:  Leading Indian manufacturer of Optical fibre and cables-- Aksh Optifibre -- has been entrusted with the contract for supplying Optical Fibre Cables under Package B of the National Optic Fibre Network (NOFN) backbone project.
The Indian government will connect over 250,000 gram panchayats ( villages) across the country with up to 100 MBPS connectivity for better e-governance, e-health services and educational services at the grass roots level, by September 2015.
The NOFN Project is being rolled out by Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL), the special purpose vehicle setup under the Department Of Telecom. BBNL has divided the project into 6 packages- East, West, North, South, Central and Northeast and separate bids have been accepted for all the 6 zones. The total value of this project has been set at 20,000 Crores.
According to a recent study published by the World Bank, a 10% increase in broadband speeds leads to 1.38% increase in GDP. The NOFN Project hopes to connect over 250,000 Gram Panchayats spread across 6600 Blocks and 641 Districts for better and faster implementation of various e-governance projects initiated by the Department of Information Technology besides the services for rural areas by the private sector.
Aksh Optifibre currently has 2 state of the art manufacturing units; One in Bhiwadi, Rajasthan which primarily caters to the manufacturing of Optical Fibre & Optical Fibre Cables and another unit in Reengus, District Sikar, Rajasthan which specializes in the manufacturing of FRP Rods and Optical Fibre Cables.
Satyendra Gupta, Chief Financial Officer, Aksh Optifibre says all their manufacturing facilities have been retro-fitted to assist with the production of Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) for the NOFN Project. This will give them an additional boost of 25% on their overall production capacity across their 2 plants.
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What is the National Optical Fibre Network? Government of India has approved on 25-10-2011 the setting up of National Optical Fiber Network (NOFN) to provide connectivity to all the 2,50,000 Gram Panchayats(GPs) in the country. This would ensure broadband connectivity with adequate bandwidth. This is to be achieved utilizing the existing optical fiber and extending it to the Gram Panchayats.
What is BBNL? Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL), is a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), set up by the Government of India for the Establishment, Management and Operation of NOFN. BBNL has been incorporated as a Public Sector Undertaking(PSU)/ Company under Companies Act(1956). BBNL was incorporated on 25/02/2012.
What are the various services that can be facilitated by BBNL? Services like G2C, B2B, P2P, B2C etc. covering E-education, Remote Health Monitoring, E-governance, Weather, Agriculture etc. can be accessed by common man through NOFN. These services will be offered by TSPs/ISPs. BBNL willl provide access to all categories of Service Providers.
What is the technologiy being used? GPON (Gigabit Passive Optical Network) technology will be used for NOFN Project. GPON is an open standard technology. ( from www.bbnl.nic.in )