A meeting of the board of directors of Telangana Fiber Grid Corporation on Wednesday resolved to appoint Information and Technology Minister K.T. Rama Rao as the chairman of the board of the corporation which was incorporated to execute T-Fiber project to provide affordable and high speed broadband connectivity in over 10,000 villages of the State.
Mr. Rama Rao, Principal Secretary of IT Jayesh Ranjan, Director (Electronics) of IT, Electronics and Communications Department Sujai Subhash Karampuri and Finance Secretary Sandeep Kumar Sulthania who were all directors of the corporation attended the board meeting.
Mr. Jayesh Ranjan told The Hindu that the project was aimed to be completed in the next 12 months with an investment of ₹ 1,200 crore. L & T Infotech, Sterlite Technologies Limited and ECIL were selected as system integrators and all three will have the same role of laying cables.
T-Fiber piggybacks on drinking water project — Mission Bhagiratha — to save digging and trenching. About 64,000 kms of trenches that will be dug for Mission Bhagiratha will also be used for T-Fiber. The fiber optic and water pipelines will run side by side in the same trenches. The large black pipe was for water and blue pipes for fibre optic cable.
The project was a multi-year deal for L & T Infotech, Sterlite and ECIL to design, build and manage the rural broadband network. It was partly funded by Central government’s Bharatnet programme and envisaged to strengthen government-to-government and government-to-citizen services with triple play services of voice, video and data to the citizens. The uniqueness of the project was that it will connect every household, about 83.58 lakh of them, across the rural part of the State.
The project was implemented on a pilot basis in Maheswaram mandal of Rangareddy district shortly after incorporation of the corporation in 2017.
