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Our Bureau

Hyderabad , Nov. 9

THE State Government is set to finalise the bids for the Rs 600-crore one gigabit (GB) broadband network, for which seven bidders have been shortlisted.

The Principal Secretary, Information Technology and Communication, Dr J.C. Mohanty, said that the broadband project, proposed to be taken up to the village level in a phased manner, has received seven bids, including international, and the bidder would be finalised by next month.

"We had invited Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd to be part of this public private partnership (PPP) model project, but since they quoted high prices, we invited other bids too," he said.

Speaking at the National Seminar on Information Security Risk Management, Dr Mohanty said the phase one of the broadband project would be completed by December 2005, which seeks to reach out 10 gigabit per second connectivity up to the district level.

Thereafter, the Government would extend this from district headquarters up to the mandal level with one GB per second connectivity, from the district and mandal level it would be 50 to 100 MBPS up to the village level.

With this move, all the Government employees will have computer connectivity across the State. "There are about six lakh employees and we expect to provide about 3.5 lakh computer terminals across the State, with one terminal for two employees," he explained.

Apart from this, with the Government utilising just about one tenth of the total bandwidth thus created through this broadband project, rest of it would be offered for commercial use.

That means, a user in a village could get up to one to two MBPS for Rs 300 to Rs 400 a month. This broadband project would interconnect all the Government departments and offices and host of services offered online.

Since security is a major component of this project, all steps have been taken to ensure data protection, Dr Mohanty said.

More Stories on : Broadband | Andhra Pradesh

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