RK Infratel seeks DoT licence for pan-India broadband rollout

 

Having successfully rolled its broadband Internet services in Surat, RK Infratel Ltd. is now eyeing a pan-India rollout. The company has applied for a class A licence with the department of telecom (DoT) which, if and when received, will allow RK Infratel to roll out optical fibre based broadband services in other major cities across India.

The company not only provides broadband services under the brand name 'Airlink ', but also offers optical fibre network for enterprise clients in telecom, oil & gas and Internet sectors.

"We are quite ambitious to expand our broadband services as well as enhance our optical fibre network within Gujarat and outside. We have applied for a class A licence with the DoT for pan-India rollout," said Rajendra Sheth, chairman and managing director of the company.

Under the 'Safe City Surat' project by Surat City Police Department and Surat Traffic Education, RK Infratel recently provided its optical fibre network for successful installation of CCTV camera network across the entire city of Surat. Following this, the company is now eyeing similar CCTV camera coverage through optical fibre network in other cities of Gujarat.

After success of Surat project, plans are underway to cover all other important cities of Gujarat like Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, Baroda, Rajkot, Bharuch and also GIDC and SEZ wherein RK Infratel will provide optical fiber cable for this next project. Moreover, the company is working on FTTH, Data center, Cloud computing and manage connectivity in Gujarat.

"The uniqueness of this network is its seamless and uninterrupted connectivity on end-to-end optical fiber with three cut protection. Considering the criticality of the project, the entire network has been created on underground fiber with the HDD method, which strengthens this network to deliver 99.99 per cent uptime. We are looking at similar projects in Ahmedabad, Jamnagar, Rajkot, Vadodara and other major cities in Gujarat," said Sheth.

From a 500 km length of optical fibre in Gujarat, the company is expanding its network to close to 200 km at an investment of Rs 70-100 crore. Meanwhile, RK Infratel is expecting to peg a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 30 per cent over its previous year's turnover of Rs 20 crore.