Chennai Corporation has kick-started work on a proposal to develop a common optic fibre cable corridor along roads in all parts of the city under the public-private-partnership mode.
On Tuesday, officials of the Chennai Corporation and Chennai Smart City Limited met with representatives from private companies to develop the common corridor for the network of fibre optic cables.
Corporation Commissioner G. Prakash said the proposal involves the development of a city-wide optical cable network corridor which would be operated and maintained by the private sector.
“This will improve communication security in all areas. The network will be wider and internet prices will become cheaper for residents,” said Mr. Prakash.
“Currently, the optical fibre network is just 30% in the city. We are studying the track rent database to develop the corridor,” said an official.
After development of the corridor, digging of roads would not be required for laying of cables. Telecom service operators would be able to utilise the common duct for laying cables.
Chennai Smart City officials have studied models in cities such as Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad. “A better model can be evolved,” said an official.
Benefits
The common corridor for fibre optical cable network is expected to promote the smart city mission projects such as command and control centre, reduce inconvenience to residents, reduce the time to rollout digital services, cut the cost to operators by enabling growth of the digital services, lead to an improvement in the quality of service and create infrastructure for 5G.
