The Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh N Chandrababu Naidu and Cisco executive chairman John T Chambers jointly launched the AP Fibre Grid project in Visakhapatnam. The initiative is aimed at providing affordable broadband and net connectivity to all households. Under the project, internet connections would be provided at cheap rate in districts of Visakhapatnam, Srikakulam and Vizianagaram by April.
A broadband connection with 15 Mbps speed will be provided at Rs 149 per month for households and 100 Mbps connections to offices at Rs 999 per month. Each connection will get 100 free-to-air TV channels and telephone facility within the same cable network. Electrical poles will be used to lay overhead fiber net cable instead of underground cable to save on the cost.
The AP Fiber Grid Project has been taken up under the National Optic Fiber Network of the Centre as a pilot. The project has been implemented at a cost of Rs 333 crore and it will be gradually rolled out to other districts of the state by July 2016. The AP Fiber Grid includes 22,500 kms of ADSS optical fiber cable, 3.75 lakh electrical poles and 2449 PoPs in sub-stations. 10,000 government offices, 60,000 schools and 6,580 primary health centres are said to benefit from this project.
N Chandrababu Naidu after inauguration the phase one of fiber grid said,
It is my dream to ensure that every household in the State has access to internet and every family reaps the benefit of it. Internet, video and telephone services will be provided at the doorstep through the project.
The project will build and operate various components including a service operations centre, network operations centre as well as the aerial fiber network and also a component connecting this network to the nearest PoP provided.
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