World Tel to connect up South
world-tel.com
Closely following WorldTel's JV with the Reliance group, the London-based telecommunication major, plans to link all the southern states through a high bandwidth infrastructure backbone, and will make a beginning with Tamil Nadu. "We will be establishing a high capacity backbone infrastructure in the south to be used for all governmental activities in future," Mr Sam Pitroda, WorldTel's CEO, said, delivering the keynote address, through video conference from Ahmedabad, at the 'Silicon South A Conclave', organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry.
He said IT backbone was being established on a commercial basis and hence corporates would have access to use it. "While the government departments are likely to use 20 per cent of the bandwidth, the rest could be used by others, including corporates," he said. Mr. Pitroda said WorldTel was also in touch with other state governments in the south. The company will work for establishing an IT backbone in Andhra Pradesh, for software exports in Karnataka and using information technology at panchayat level in Kerala. In Tamil Nadu the project will take off soon with, with at least five community Internet centres to come up in the city in 90-120 days. Agreeing that there has been a delay in implementing the project, Mr Pitroda said, it took much longer to negotiate a joint venture agreement with the government. "Then, it took even longer for a JV with the private sector," he said.
[Dec 17, 1999 MI]
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