The government has informed the parliament that a large number of initiatives have been taken by the government to improve broadband connectivity in Lakshadweep and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, Nityanand Rai, Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, informed about two optical fibre cable (OFC) projects of the central government connecting these islands with the Indian mainland. These are the Chennai Andaman Nicobar Islands (CANI) OFC project and the Kochi Lakshadweep Islands (KLI) submarine OFC project.
The minister said that the two island union territories (UTs) of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep were previously connected through satellite bandwidth of about 4.1 Gbps and 1.7 Gbps, respectively. Thus, only limited bandwidth was available in these strategically located remote islands.
Rai said that the CANI OFC project, which was commissioned in 2020 at a cost of about Rs 12.24 billion, has revolutionised internet connectivity in the UT. Under the project, a submarine cable was laid from Chennai to Port Blair, and further to seven other islands, covering about 85 per cent of the UT’s population. The minister stated that as a result of this project, the bandwidth utilisation has increased from 4.1 Gbps to 70.31 Gbps in the islands. Fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) services have increased to about 34,500, internet speed has increased from 100 Kbps to up to 300 Mbps, and total mobile connections have increased to about 700,000 from 470,000 in the UT. He said that 5G services were also launched in the island, and there are 112 5G base transceiver stations (BTSs) at present in the UT.
Further, Rai informed that the KLI submarine OFC project, with a cost of about Rs 10.72 billion, has connected the mainland and all the inhabited islands of Lakshadweep through submarine cables. The project is designed to offer speeds upto 100 Gbps and support 4G as well as 5G networks. Trial traffic has been fed into the network. At present, 3,972 FTTh connections have been provided through this network. As per the minister, the KLI project is expected to benefit the public significantly through enhanced online access in the fields of education, telemedicine, e-commerce, digital governance, tourism etc.
