| GailTel's initiative to lay optic fibre cable in West Bengal was to happen along with the proposed gas pipeline from Uttar Pradesh to Haldia and then to Kolkata. |
| Given that it would take 2006-7 to lay the pipeline, the company is intending to advance its telecom foray in the state by offering bandwidth from early next fiscal. |
| J K Singh Teotia, general manager (GailTel) said that by 2006-07, all capacities would be bought by the consumers and hence GailTel would put its project on fast track.Singh added. "We will complete the roll out by this fiscal," he pointed out. |
| The project would aim to provide affordable high capacity broadband services and high capacity home and office connectivities for video conferencing, e-medicine, e-governance, e-money transfers, e-monitoring and disaster recovery. |
| State IT secretary, G D Gautama said, GAIL officials had made a presentation to the IT department on its plans. |
| The GAIL chairman and managing director also met the IT minister, Manabendra Mukherjee, some weeks back. The GailTel network, at present, connects 73 cities and towns across the country and 65 long distance charging areas. |
| Singh said, the network in West Bengal would connect the network currently passing through Vishakhapatnam and Kanpur. He added, if one of these networks failed then it could serviced from the West Bengal network. |
| The total length of the network for the connectivity to West Bengal is about 1,700 km. The entire network in the state would be owned, managed and maintain by GAIL. |
| "There is good demand from software companies as well as long distance telecom operators ," Singh added. |
| The company also would connect some smaller cities en route to Kolkata. It will finalise those details within two weeks time. |
| The optic fibre project was part of GAIL's plan to set up gas pipeline infrastructure across various regionn in India under the National Gas Grid programme. |
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