The Telecom Commission will soon take a decision on the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) committee’s recommendation for a threefold increase in the cost of NOFN project from Rs 210 billion, as approved earlier to Rs 727.78 billion, on August 4, 2015. The committee has also recommended extending the deadline for commissioning of the project to December 2017.

The recommendations by the expert committee are aimed at facilitating the implementation of the project, which has not made much headway in the past few years owing to cost revisions and delays in tendering process. The committee has also suggested reduction in broadband speed to be delivered through this network to 20 megabit per second at household level from earlier planned speed of 100 mbps across all gram panchayats in the country.

According to the previously set targets for NOFN’s implementation, 50,000 village panchayats were to be connected with optical fibre by March 31, 2015. It also targeted extending this to 100,000 more panchayats by March 31, 2016 and another 100,000 panchayats by December 2016.