Steps were initiated by Telangana government to provide high-speed internet connectivity to all households at affordable costs.
| Photo Credit: The Hindu Graphics
Telangana Government has initiated steps towards fulfilling its promise of providing high-speed internet connectivity to all households at affordable costs.
Pilot project in select villages for three months
Telangana Technology Services Limited has called for short term tender for selection of Managed Service Providers for conducting Proof of Concept (POC) testing on T-Fiber network in designated villages in Telangana where it will be implemented on a pilot basis for three months and will be scaled up subsequently.
T-Fiber is the designated ‘State Implementing Agency’ for executing the project with a vision to establish a state-of-the-art network infrastructure that is scalable, robust, secure, resilient, and long-lasting to provide affordable, high-speed broadband connectivity from State Headquarters to all homes and enterprises in Telangana.
The project’s objective
The objective of the project is to empower and improve the digital infrastructure in the State by establishing a ‘High-speed Internet broadband’ using FTTH and hybrid connections to end-customers (households/habitants). Accordingly, T-Fiber envisaged high-speed broadband network enabling connectivity to over 3.5 crore people and institutions by connecting 10 zones (33 Districts), 589 mandals (Block), 12751 Gram Panchayats and 93 lakh households (63 lakh rural and 30 lakh urban), the TGTS said in the tender document.
No cost to customers for 3 months: tender stipulation
The development follows Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy’s announcement recently that the Government was taking steps to provide high speed internet connectivity for users at the grass root level at affordable costs. The tender, accordingly, stipulates the participants to offer basic service package to all the households in their assigned village at no cost to the customers for up to three months from the date of service activation.
What should a basic service package have?
The basic service package should at least have live TV channels (Free to air channels, bouquet of minimum Telugu pay channels (HD compatible), broadband internet (minimum 20 Mbps plan, 500 GB FUP, post-FUP 2 Mbps); VoIP services (the participant will be allowed to subcontract the solutioning for VoIP); Government to Citizen (G2C) services and Government to Government (G2G service like remote education, TSAT and other services) as provided by the Government.
The selected participant will be required to supply, install, commission and test an open-source Android device-compatible virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution (for maximum 15 devices), across the designated villages. The participant will be required to provide the requisite operational support for the VDI solution which would be hosted at the network operation centre of the T-Fiber with an option to subcontract the solution of VDI.
The document said the selected participants should provide sufficient liaising/coordinating persons to provide the service in the respective village and the participants are required to submit details of list of channels. They should also submit the details of the computers and storage requirements to T-Fiber. The selected participants will have to ensure uninterrupted access to all the G2C services besides integrating their content.
Published – September 09, 2024 06:13 pm IST
