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Our Bureau

Chennai, Sept. 19 Ericsson India Private Ltd today launched a rural wireless broadband connectivity project named Gramjyoti in the eastern coast of Tamil Nadu in partnership with four other companies and a non-government organisation (NGO).

The project will cover 18 villages and 15 small towns in the region around Mahabalipuram and will cater to around one lakh people residing there. It aims to provide high-speed Internet connection enabling the users to access a range of services including telemedicine, e-education, e-governance, online local information, voice and video call services, live television and entertainment.

These services would be provided by the partner companies. Edurite will provide e-education, Apollo Telemedicine Networking Foundation will provide healthcare services, One97 will provide information on local weather, seeds, fertilisers, pesticides and market rates of crops and Turner International India Private Ltd will provide live television programmes through this network. The NGO Hand-in-Hand will organise the villagers at the local level and would work as a facilitator to help the villagers effectively use the new facilities.

“This will be the first HSPA-powered rural broadband demo network that will deliver the benefits of 3G to the local population,” the Vice-President (Marketing and Strategy) of Ericsson, Mr P. Balaji, told presspersons here today.

“The initiative seeks to demonstrate how the new WCDMA/HSPA technology can be a major catalyst for social and economic empowerment by bridging the digital divide and improve productivity and quality of life,” he said.

The entire exercise is not a corporate social responsibility project but would eventually be a self-sustaining revenue generating activity, he added.

The President of Apollo Telemedicine, Dr K. Ganapathy, said that the project had the potential to provide basic healthcare services at a cost of around Rs 2 per family per day if the total number of families covered is large enough.

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