BANGALORE, INDIA: Spanco Telesystems and Solutions Ltd, has bagged a Rs.70 crore contract for the roll out of a State Wide Area Network (SWAN) to connect over 300 districts/talukas under the Government of Orissa.

As part of the planned National e-Governance Action Plan (NEGAP), this network will provide connectivity to government offices from the state headquarters at Mantralaya down to 30 district collector offices and 284 Taluka/Tehsil offices in the State of Orissa.

It would serve as the core backbone of the state for its various e-governance applications, citizenship initiatives and diverse IT activities too. The SWAN project aims at providing a reliable, integrated and robust telecommunications infrastructure catering to high speed and high capacity delivery of voice, data and video transmissions.

This will improve the service delivery and response time to the citizens of Orissa enabling quick access to information. It will enable citizens to make various forms of payments and obtain facilities information as well as B2C (business-to-consumer) services from a single location using state-of-the-art technologies. 

The implementation and operation of this network will warrant deployment of over 200 people, most of whom will be locally sourced.

Kapil Puri, chairman, Spanco Telesystems and Solutions Ltd. said, "We are honoured to partner with the Orissa government and strongly believe that this initiative will contribute significantly to its progress as a state. We are happy to deploy our skills and competency for the delivery of relevant day to day services to our fellow citizens. We are confident that the Orissa SWAN will increase efficiencies and response times significantly, drive down communication costs for the government and provide a major impetus to the state's developmental plans and programs."

"The setting up of the Orissa SWAN is an important first step for Spanco. As time lapses and we gain credibility within the state, we see ourselves playing a significant role in continuously addressing the larger IT and technology infrastructure needs of the state, not only in the e-governance space but also in the power and transport segments. It will be our endeavour to mitigate losses accruing to the state exchequer due to inefficient manual systems prevalent here and to leverage IT to stem this problem", he added.

Pradipta Kumar Mohapatra, IT commissioner cum secretary, Government of Orissa, said, "Our government is deeply committed to building a robust IT infrastructure in the state, to introduce diverse e governance initiatives and empower the common people of Orissa. We are confident that our partnership with Spanco's towards attainment of this objective, will be a fruitful and long standing one. Spanco's proven expertise in this arena coupled with our will and commitment to deploy IT for the state's overall development, should yield quantum benefits by further strengthening existing networks and systems across the state and enable the people of Orissa to become tech savvy and part of the technology mainstream."

With Maharashtra SWAN already under implementation, the winning of this Orissa SWAN clearly establishes Spanco Telesystems as a dominant player in this market segment. There are several other SWAN bids, at various stages of evaluation, where Spanco has also participated.

In Maharashtra, besides setting up the SWAN the company has also bagged the order from Ministry of Food and Civil Supplies for modernization of Public Distribution System, where barcoded ration cards will be issued to citizens at large, besides computerization of entire public distribution system involving networking, POS terminals at all ration shops, data centre, tracking of vehicles carrying food grains and other managed services for a contract period of three years.