Govt allots Rs 3334 cr for converged services

NEW DELHI: The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) has approved the proposal to establish State Wide Area Networks (SWAN) across the country in 29 states and six Union Territories (UTs) in a phased manner to enable seamless delivery of G2G and G2C converged services-voice, data and video-in the country.






The CCEA has also hiked the initial Rs 1000 crore plan announced by the Union Minister for Communications and IT Dayanidhi Maran in October last to a total estimated outlay of Rs 3334 crore for the entire country. The CCEA has also decided that part of the total outlay, Rs 2005 crore would be used to provide as Grant-in-aid, to be expended over five years from the date of sanction of individual project by the Department of Information Technology (DIT), beginning FY 2004-05.





CCEA has also given its approval for the constitution and composition of the Empowered Committee with the delegation of administrative and financial powers to approve individual SWAN project of the States within the provisions laid down in the SWAN Policy Guidelines by the DIT.





As a part of this policy, states would need to furnish proposals to DIT for establishment of SWANs. DIT will meet the entire capital and operational costs of the network for a period of five years except bandwidth cost, which has to be borne by the states. A State may opt to implement the SWAN either through NIC or through any other agency selected by it.





The policy states that states will have to provide bandwidth of at least 2 Mbps up to block level by entering into contracts with BSNL or any other operator. The bandwidth cost has to be borne by the states for which BSNL has offered a special tariff package with a 90 percent discount.





NIC will issue the guidelines for security, standardization, interoperability and interconnect requirements. The states will also be needed to enter into SLAs to ensure quality and reliability.