Eminent scientist and former President of India APJ Abdul Kalam has made a pitch for laying optical fibre for transmitting data along with power lines to help achieve India’s digital vision.
This will be an effective solution to the challenge of laying fibre cable underground in order to achieve the target of the Digital India initiative on time before 2017, he observed.
“If we lay the optical fibre along with the existing electrical power lines, we can reach out the entire country and the vision of Digital India can be realized,” he said adding that appropriate policy should be evolved to connect the optical fire along with power lines.
Speaking at the Roots to Wings conclave organised by Sterlite Technologies in Aurangabad, Kalam said that the time had come to launch new technology for improving connectivity in remote areas.
He pointed out that India today had 900 million mobile phone connections, and the current number of 160 million mobile-based internet users was estimated to go over 500 million by the end of 2017.
“The majority of 600,000 villages where 70 per cent of the population lives are not connected with high speed internet connectivity so far,” he said.
India is currently ranked 118{+t}{+h} worldwide on broadband speed, averaging 1.7 mbps against over 20 mbps in Japan and Hong Kong. With approximately 14 million fiber km laid for the last one decade, it is expected to reach 30 million fibre km by 2017.
China is creating 200 million fibre km every year to bridge the digital divide. To bridge the digital divide between the rural and urban areas in India, and connect 2.5 lakh panchayats and 600,000 villages with fibre optics cables, we need approximately 6 lakh cable km and 15 million fibre km to connect 2.5 lakh village panchayats, Kalam said
“If we need to connect 600,000 villages and the cities, then we need to lay maximum of 400 million fibre km,” he said, adding that the challenge of realizing "Digital India" was to create 400 million fibre km infrastructure.