Railways to expand OFC network

Indian Railways (IR) will invest Rs 700 crore to lay optical fibre cable along an additional 15,000 kilometre track in two years.

S C Gupta, member electrical of Railway Board said the railways intended to lay OFC for connectivity and signaling needs along all high density rail routes across the country.

"IR has so far laid OFC along 22,000km of rail track. Within two years, the railways will convert over 50 per cent of the network from copper cable to optical fibre," Gupta said at a press meet in Kolkata on Wednesday. Gupta was in the city to inaugurate OFC communication system in Sealdah north and main section of Eastern Railway.

The conversion from copper to OFC was being executed by Railtel Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of IR. The company would market spare capacity to bulk users of bandwidth.

IR has close 65,000km of rail network in the country. Gupta said IR was presently using only 10 per cent of its capacity.

"We are confident that usage of bandwidth will go up in line with teledensity in the country," he said, admitting there was a glut of bandwidth in India at present.

Railtel was now selling spare capacity to operators like Bharti, Tata Group, Hutch, VSNL and BSNL. "Companies like Reliance may buy bandwidth in pockets where it does not have its own network," he said.

Railtel provided reach into many terrains and remote areas and one of its aims was to provide connectivity to rural areas. The proposed Rs 20,000 crore rural area rail connectivity plan would lay rail lines to backward areas. The reach of Railtel would be augmented further after its implementation.

IR would also implement its anti-collision device (ACD), developed by the Konkan Railways, in Northern Frontier Railway (NFR) by 2004-5. IR would install ACD along 10,000km of track after the system was finetuned on NFR.