National Fibre Optic Network Project and the Expert Committee Report

The new NDA Government’s approach to every issue, irrespective of the problem, seems to be the same – hand it over to the private sector. Not surprisingly, the “expert” committee’s review report on the ambitious National Optic Fibre Network (NOFN) project — which is to provide broadband rural telephony — has recommended exactly that. Instead of BSNL, virtually the only telecom company providing rural telephony today, the Committee has recommended large scale induction of private players. This is in spite of their dismal record in meeting their existing rural telephony obligations. The Committee has also suggested radical technical and administrative “restructuring” of the project that will increase its capital cost by more than two and a half times, and a time overrun of at least two years. To justify these increases, it uses fictitious figures of “benefits”, which can be shown to be either imaginary, or crude arithmetic manipulations.
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