RailTel has bagged the Rs 6 billion optic fibre cable (OFC) network expansion project in the Northeast. The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has also cleared a Rs 3.88 billion subsidy allocation for the project from the Universal Services Obligation Fund (USOF). The balance amount will be provided by RailTel.

The project entails laying in excess of 10,000 km of optical fibre cable across the Northeast (excluding Assam) to create a bulk bandwidth resource that will be shared by all IT and telecom service providers operating in the region at discounted rates. According to the DoT, "RailTel emerged the L1 bidder for augmentation, creation and management of a greenfield OFC network across six northeastern states, where there is a serious bandwidth constraint. The company will be issued a letter of intent (LoI) shortly.”

The government has split the Northeast telecom circle into two zones for execution of the upcoming OFC network expansion. Zone I includes Meghalaya, Mizoram and Tripura, while Zone II encompasses Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Nagaland.

The USOF subsidy components for creating a bandwidth resource in Northeast Zone I and Zone II are pegged at Rs 895 million and Rs 2.98 billion respectively.