The Hindu Business Line : Talks on to extend IT network to rural areas in AP

THE State Government is in parleys with telecom service providers to create a one-gigabit State information backbone that would streamline information and data and bring a host of Government services to the doorstep of households in the State's rural heartlands.

Dr J.C. Mohanty, Principal Secretary, State Information Technology and Communication Department, said the Government had embarked on a process to bridge the digital divide by creating a gigabit bandwidth in the next two years that will help provide a host of e-governance solutions even up to the village level. The Government is in parleys with leading telecom players, including the State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, RailTel and other private operators.

"This project would be supported by affordable computers to be developed by a team of researchers, headed by Prof Raj Reddy of the Carnegie Mellon University. While standardisation of data and building a host of Government applications are something constantly being tackled at multiple levels, this project will be well supported by the large infrastructure now being created through both urban eSeva centres and similar centres in the rural areas," he said at a meeting of the Hyderabad Software Exporters Association (HYSEA).

Dr Mohanty said about 170 urban centres have thus far been completed and 30 more would be operationalised by March-end. These citizens' centres are set to complement the 6,000 rural kiosks that would be in place by June this year. Many of these centres would be handled by converting existing STD booths.

The backbone thus being created would enable the Government to reach out citizen services as also empower them with necessary information, including critical inputs for the agriculture sector. The Institute of Electronic Governance here would develop applications in Open Source that would be relevant to even rural households, he explained.

The Institute is also coordinating another initiative where a student knowledge forum has been formed with the participation of about 40 engineering colleges. This project is aimed at capacity building and generating quality manpower. Resources from various colleges would be pooled, and this would help generate quality manpower, he explained.

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Talks on to extend IT network to rural areas in AP