BSNL to complete submarine cable project by June

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) would complete the ambitious project of laying submarine cable between India and Sri Lanka by June-end, R M Subbiah, general manager, southern telecom projects of BSNL, said.

Presiding over a function organised to distribute Bharat Sanchar Sarathi Awards and Sanchar seva pedak-2006 for employees of the office of general manager, transmission projects, at Madurai last week, Subbiah said the project to lay 332-km long under-sea cable connecting Tuticorin in India and Mt Lavinia in Sri Lanka, would facilitate BSNL to have its own international gateway.

"Besides, BSNL will save huge amount of recurring expenditure being incurred for hiring services to connect international long distance calls from other telecom service providers," he added. The project cost is being shared by BSNL and Sri Lankan Telecom.

Laying of optical fibre cable (OFC) for 2,304 km in Tamil Nadu and Kerala as against its target of 2,200 km for the year 2005-06.

Subbiah said that 3.5 lakh km of cable laying under the Overlay Access Network (OAN) project would be taken up in the next five years.

It would connect all taluk headquarters and Global System Of Mobile Connections (GSM) sites in a ring formation, along with the existing 4.7 lakh km of OFC, he said.