Andhra Pradesh has become the first state in the country to have decided to execute the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) project on its own. Meanwhile, the finance ministry has stated that the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) will reimburse the cost for the same to the state government of Andhra Pradesh. Earlier, DoT had allowed the willing states to undertake the project execution on their own in order to expedite the rollout of optical fibre cables under the NOFN project.

Under its proposal, Andhra Pradesh government has planned to deliver broadband connection with a download speed of 10-15 mbps to 12 million households for a price of Rs 150 per month. The state has proposed to complete the project at a cost of Rs 49.13 billion in the next five years while the government has earmarked Rs 19.40 billion for the project in the state.

For executing the NOFN project, the state will create ‘Andhra Pradesh Fibre Corporation’ which would be a wholly-owned state company, to manage the network being build and will also own the assets. Further, the state will create another entity called 'Digital Andhra Corporation' which will run on the public-private partnership model. This entity will be responsible for the creation of a requisite ecosystem for broadband adoption in the state.