A team of officials from the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) visited the city on Friday to conduct a feasibility study on opening an exchange here, according to a press release.

Nikhil, Business Development Manager and Abhishek, Technical Manager from NIXI, Delhi, interacted with representatives of ITAAP, STPI, leading Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and GITAM Deemed to be University and Gayatri Group of Educational Institutions.

The need for setting up a branch here was impressed upon the NIXI team.

IT Association of AP (ITAAP) president Narayana and chairman of advisory board Naresh Kumar explained that there were over 150 IT companies in Vizag and 13,000 new seats were allotted under the BPO scheme of the Government of India to Vizag. The potential of the city with a number of PSUs such as Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, HPCL, NTPC besides being the headquarters of the Eastern Naval Command (ENC) and also a number of private companies should be taken into account.

The officials were told that Vizag was home to 13,000 registered MSME units and they have to go digital for filing GST and TDS returns. They would benefit with low cost and high quality Internet. The NIXI officials explained that if all the ISPs connect their data centre, the cost could be reduced by 30-40 per cent, depending on the number of members. They said that the NIXI exchange could be located in the STPI premises in Visakhapatnam, if the IT Department agreed, according to Naresh.

The team visited Visakhapatnam on the representation given by MP MVV Satyanarayana to IT Minister and the IT Secretary of the Government of India.

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