Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Thursday inaugurated the Chennai – Andaman and Nicobar Islands submarine cable laying work on Thursday. Later in the evening he flagged off the ship to lay the cable at Chennai Port.
As on date, the islands are connected to the mainland through satellite link that has limited bandwidth capacity. Hence the government decided to install 2,250 km Submarine Optical link from Chennai to the Andaman and Nicobar islands to provide high speed internet connectivity.
BSNL has been appointed as the Project Execution Agencyand the work has been awarded to M/s NEC Technologies India Pvt. Ltd. The link is targeted to be commissioned by June.
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The project, estimated at ₹1,224 crore, will connect Port Blair along with seven other Islands of Andaman and Nicobar - Little Andaman, Car Nicobar, Kamorta, Great Nicobar, Havelock, Long Island and Rangat. At present, the combined availability for the islands is only 3.2 Gbps. At the initial stage of commissioning, the bandwidth availability will be 400 Gbps which is over 100 times of the existing capacity.
Speaking at the event, the minister termed BSNL as the strategic asset of the country and said he was on a mission to make it one of the top companies. “It was BSNL that came to the rescue, in terms of communication, when Chennai saw floods, during the earthquake in Nepal and other calamities. Hence it is not just a company,” said the Minister.
He directed P.K. Purwar, chief managing director, BSNL, to execute the project on or before time to show to the world what the country was capable of. “My Digital Commission has already approved laying of similar cable between Kochi and Lakshwadeep islands. This is being done at a cost more than ₹1,000 crore.
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D. K. Joshi, Lieutenant Governor, Andaman and Nicobar, and officials of BSNL were present.