BSNL to provide bandwidth for SWAN

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) would provide bandwidth services for the implementation of the Orissa State Wide Area Network (OSWAN) project in the state.

This project is being taken up at a cost of Rs 200 crore under the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) of the Government of India.

OSWAN project is being executed by the Orissa Computer Application Centre (OCAC), the technical directorate of the state IT department.

BSNL would provide dedicated leased lines to connect the state headquarter in Bhubaneswar with all the district headquarters and the block headquarters.

The other offices of the state government would also be connected with the state and district headquarters over the leased lines. The expenditure involved in providing bandwidth services is Rs 23.26 crore.

“Each and every office of the state government would be connected with one another under the OSWAN project. The entire project would improve e-governance services and it is expected to be commissioned by November this year”, said Pradipta K Mohapatra, the Orissa IT secretary.

AN Rai, chief general manager (telecom) of BSNL’s Orissa circle said, “This project will benefit the citizens of Orissa in a big way and change the manner in which the people interact with the government offices. Under the OSWAN project, all the state government offices up to the block level will be connected.”

BSNL’s network would have a minimum bandwidth of two megabytes per second which can be upgraded to eight megabytes per second. The telecom major’s network would offer voice, data and video connectivity to the users. An agreement was signed in this connection on Wednesday between MK Pattnaik, general manager, OCAC and BK Behera, deputy general manager, BSNL.

Mohapatra said, the state IT department had planned to set up 8,558 common services centres across the state out of which about 2,700 centres were already operational.

The objective of setting up these CSCs was to provide three kinds of services to the people- government to citizen services, business to citizen services and business to business services.

The CSCs would enable the citizens to access hassle free services on a nominal user fee.

The state IT department has also floated tenders for setting up a state level Centralised Data Centre.

This project also taken up under the NeGP will be implemented at an investment of Rs 75 crore and the amount is entirely funded by the Centre.

The state level Centralised Data Centre in Orissa will have a centralised office at the Orissa Computer Application Centre.

This state of the art data centre will maintain data of all the departments of the state government.

Mohapatra said, the government expects the e-governance project to be fully implemented by December this year.