Telecom Commission to meet on Sept 10 to review proj status

Commission will review status of NOFN project and discuss strategy that needs to be adopted

The Telecom Commission is scheduled to meet on September 10 to review the status of mobile services in naxal affected area and the national broadband project.

"TC will meet in afternoon of September 10. It is to review status of NOFN project and discuss strategy that needs to be adopted as we move ahead," a senior government official told PTI.

Another source added that the inter-ministerial body will also discuss status of mobile services in Left Wing Extremist (LWE) affected area and other milestone set by government for various projects.

The government had been deferring deadline for completion of national optical fibre network (NOFN) roll out for providing broadband connectivity across 2.5 lakh village panchayats from target date of December, 2012 to December 2013 and now it is expected to be completed by end of 2014.

After completion of NOFN project, village panchayats are expected to get broadband connectivity with high speed of up to 100 megabit per second.

Bharat Broadband Network Limited, special purpose vehicle set by government for national broadband implementation, has floated tenders for optical fibre network and broadband equipments.

However, it is yet to start work to be done under these tenders.

For mobile services in LWE affected areas, state-run BSNL had floated a tender last month for which last date to submit bid is September 27.

The Cabinet in June had cleared the three-year old proposal to set up mobile towers at 2,199 locations at cost of around Rs 3,046 crore in nine states, in the wake of a naxal attack that led to killing of 27 people, including senior Congress leaders, in Chattisgarh in May this year.