Centre sanctions Rs 97cr for TNSWAN

This was announced by Vivek Harinarain, secretary, IT, Government of Tamil Nadu, at the inauguration of Tata Elxsi's design and development centre in the city on Wednesday. The 20,000-sq ft office will initially house 100 individuals. This will be increased to 500 in the next 12 months.

TNSWAN will connect the secretariat, district and taluk headquarters. It will have 385 points of presence when completed.

"We will not differentiate between rural and urban areas (with regard to internet bandwidth and connectivity)," Harinarain said.

Earlier, Union minister for communications and information technology Dayanidhi Maran announced that the Union government would spend Rs 1,000 crore in the next five years to facilitate development of the network by the state governments.

Tata Elxsi's design and development centre will focus on providing networking services to Indian and global customers.