Procedural delays and lack of coordination among various stakeholders have forced the Government to push back the completion date for the Rs 20,000-crore national optical fibre network project by two years. While the earlier plan was to complete the project by October 2013, the Department of Telecom (DoT) has now moved a note for the Cabinet Committee on Infrastructure, seeking approval to push the deadline to September 2015.

Justifying the move, DoT has said in the note that the revision is based on ground realities and the scale of the project. “While a lot of preliminary work has been undertaken, it may be difficult to adhere to the timelines stipulated by the Cabinet for the completion of the project in two years,” it said.

“The project is of mega nature, widely dispersed across the country and to reach fibre to unreached areas that are rural and remote. The existing fibre across the country of all operators is of the order of about 10 lakh km, of which 7 lakh km has been laid by BSNL over the last 15 years,” DoT said.

THree phases

DoT has also proposed to change the rollout plan. Initially, the project envisaged connecting 2.5 lakh village panchayats in one go by 2013. Now, it wants the project to be rolled out in three phases with 1 lakh panchayats to be connected in the first phase by March 2014. DoT has justified the change in plan by saying that the policy to procure only Made-in-India products has affected supply of equipment.

“The key point to be noted is that a large project with vast requirements with a given set of suppliers may have a tendency to pool or cartel. There is thus a need to de-risk this project from the vagaries of such action,” the note stated.

DoT said that though the manufacturing capacity of optical fibre cable across the country is 7 lakh km, the actual supplies gave been just above 2.5 lakh km for the past three years. In addition, the work execution capacity of central PSUs over the last few years has been only up to 50,000-60,000 km a year.

The Government had floated a special purpose vehicle called Bharat Broadband Network Ltd with an authorised share capital of Rs 1,000 crore to plan out the project.

The execution was left to three PSUs — Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, Railtel and Powergrid.

But lack of coordination among the implementing agencies has ensured that the project has not gone beyond the pilot phase.

At a recent meeting, Bharat Broadband complained that there was no harmony in the tendering and execution process among the PSUs. None of the major work including field survey and procurement of equipment has been completed.

Apart from procedural delays, lack of a proper business case is also plaguing the project.

BSNL had earlier said that there were no takers for its broadband connections in rural areas. The PSU wants the Government to drive usage by undertaking e-governance projects in a big way.

thomas.thomas@thehindu.co.in

Related Topics