Govt to involve private players under NOFN for 50K panchayats

New Delhi: To expedite roll out of national optical fibre network (NOFN) for high speed broadband in rural areas, the government will float tender in March to invite private firms for laying fibres across 50 thousand village panchayats.[caption id="attachment_2056145" align="alignleft" width="380"] Optical fibre. AFP[/caption]"We have started working on involving private players for civil works in NOFN project. BBNL will float tender in Marchfor rolling out fibre in 50 thousand village panchayats," Bharat Broadband Network Ltd CEO and USOF Administrator Aruna Sundararajan told PTI.The government has set target to complete roll out of NOFN across 2.5 lakh village panchayats by December 2016. The deadline for the project running at snail's pace was advanced to December 2016 from March 2017 on direction from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The network aims to deliver broadband connections of 100 megabit per second download speed at village panchayat level.BBNL is currently handling roll out of NOFN through three public sector firm - BSNL, RailTel and PowerGrid.Under phase 1, BSNL has been allocated about 81,000, RailTel 8,000 and PowerGrid about 14,000 village panchayats for laying out optical fibre cable (OFC) and complete roll out in 50,000 panchayats by March 2015.By the end of December 2014, the three PSUs are estimated to have completed only 5 per cent of their work.PTI