Broadband connectivity at block level in Kerala by next March  ( July '18,2005, HBL)

THE work for taking broadband connectivity to block level under the State Information Infrastructure project of Kerala will be completed by March next year.

The private bandwidth providers have already allotted free bandwidth of 6 Mbps to the State Government and an additional 2 Mbps will be provided by Tatas, which will enable completion of the wide-area networking as scheduled, said Mr P.H. Kurien, IT Secretary.

He told Business Line that the bidding process for supply of equipment would begin soon and the contract would be for a five-year period. The project is being funded by the Centre and the initial investments will be made by the successful bidders.

The State information backbone extends from Thiruvananthapuram to Kozhikode with network aggregation centres at Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi and Kozhikode. The network uses Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) technology and can carry voice, data and video signals.

The last mile access from Government offices and other institutions to the nearest network centre will be through cable or wireless links. The Kerala IT Mission is the nodal agency of the project, while the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) is the implementing agency.

The State Information Infrastructure project consists of two facilities, namely, the State e-governance data centre and the state information backbone. The e-governance data centre is located in Thiruvananthapuram.

The core banking solution of the Kerala State Co-operative Bank is the first application to use the information infrastructure. The Kerala Water Authority and the State Electricity Board, among others, will also be using the infrastructure in the days to come.

The data centre in Thiruvananthapuram, opened recently, houses a server farm, including web servers, mail servers, database servers and application servers.

There is provision for Government offices to co-locate their servers at the data centre. Besides, centralised storage facility is also provided at the Centre.

The information infrastructure will be operational for 24 hours round the year. A helpdesk to address any complaints from users will also be operational round the clock.