NOFN to do pilots in September

National Optical Fiber Network (NOFN) is planning for pilots in Ajmer, Tripura, and Vishakapatnam (Vizag) by September, 2012.

Each block has 30 gram panchayats and fiber laydown is planned for September, 2012. The pilots will be conducted in three blocks and OFC will be laid by Bharat Broadband in partnership with BSNL, Railtel and Powergrid Corporation of India. Once the pilots are completed, the government is planning to rollout NOFN in a big way across India.

The pilots will focus on applications like: e-Health and telemedicine; e-Education and e-Learning; e-Governance and e-Commerce. All these applications will help in empowering rural masses.

To make pilots a success, all telecom service providers, digital service providers and application developers need to work together.

Speaking about NOFN, N Ravi Shankar, administrator, USOF said "NOFN is a digital highway on which a whole lot of IT services can ride. It will provide more opportunity to the content providers."

He also informed that the fiber optic network is like digital version of Pradhan Mantri Gramin Sarak Yogna and the main objective is to provide high bandwidth connectivity to all.

National Optical Fiber Network will connect around 250,000 panchayats by allowing Optical fiber to go till the block level and will help rural masses on health, education and governance. Rural folks can access information through Akash or any wireless access device.

In terms of applications one can do video conferencing, e-commnerce, and other applications.