NEC has bagged BSNL contract for provisioning of under sea cable between Chennai & Port Blair and five other islands.
The submarine undersea OFC link will connect Chennai and Port Blair & five other islands e.g. Little Andaman, Car Nicobar, Havelock, Kamorta and Great Nicobar.
The estimated cost of the project sanctioned by the government was Rs. 1,102.38 crore including operational expenses for 5 years.
The undersea cable will equip Andaman & Nicobar Islands (ANI) with appropriate bandwidth for voice and data connectivity for implementation of e-Governance initiatives; establishment of enterprises & e-commerce facilities. It will also enable the provision of adequate support to educational institutes for knowledge sharing, availability of job opportunities and fulfil the vision of Digital India.
The geographical configuration and the location of the Andaman & Nicobar Islands chain in the Bay of Bengal safeguard India’s eastern seaboard. Provision of secure, reliable, robust, and affordable telecom facilities in these islands is of importance from a strategic point of view to the country and also an important requirement for the socio-economic development of the islands.
Presently, the only medium of providing telecom connectivity between Mainland and Andaman & Nicobar Islands is though satellites, but the bandwidth available is limited to 1 Gbps. Satellite bandwidth is very costly and its availability is limited due to which future bandwidth requirement cannot be met solely through it and there is no redundancy.
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