The board of Power Grid
Corporation of India recently
approved an investment of
505
crore to strengthen the company's
telecom backbone network and access
network, over the next two years. This
would contribute towards the National
Knowledge Network (NKN) Project.
NKN is a nationwide project that
aims to create a broadband network for
interconnecting all IITs, universities,
research institutions, and all prominent
engineering and medical colleges, with
an objective of seamlessly sharing data
and knowledge resources. The NKN
network will also include state capitals
and district headquarters across the
country. National Informatics Centre
(NIC) is the nodal implementing agency
for the NKN project.
Background: The Cabinet
Committee on Infrastructure approved
the establishment of the National
Knowledge Network (NKN) with an
outlay of
5,990 crore on March 28,
2010, for a 10-year service period. NIC
has finalized the allocation of
bandwidth capacities amongst four
telecom service providers—PGCIL,
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, Railtel
Corporation of India and MTNL.
NKN will have 84 national longdistance
(NLD) core links with capacity
10 Gbps, initially 2.5 Gbps. PGCIL will be responsible for 33 links, followed by
BSNL (30 links) and Raitel (21 links).
There will be around 500 edge links of
1 Gbps, currently under finalization, to
connect district headquarters.
Additionally, around 1,500 edge links
will be created to connect institutions.
Around 850 links have been already
allotted between the aforementioned
four telecom service providers.
PGCIL formally became part of this
nationwide project following the NKN
Project Service Agreement that was
signed between NIC, National
Informatics Centre Service Inc (NICSI)
and PGCIL in September 2010.