The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is working on alternative approaches to complete the roll out of the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) project by March 2016. The project has already faced several procedural delays and the deadline has been extended multiple times. This has led DoT to re-think its strategy for the completion of the project. The final deadline for the project has been fixed for March 2016.
Under the new approach, DoT is planning to disintegrate the implementation process of the NOFN project and outsource the fibre rollout to private agencies on a turnkey basis. In this regard, the telecom department has recommended dividing the country into six to eight regions comprising two to three states and allocation of each region to a private vendor to pace up the execution of the project. Currently, the state enterprises namely, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, RailTel Corporation of India and Power Grid Corporation of India are responsible for the cable laying and ducting along with connecting it to the existing cable infrastructure.
Meanwhile, DoT is also weighing the option of combining the NOFN project with the Government User Network (GUN) which is a platform for delivering government?s e-services to the citizens.
