The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) and the
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) have signed an MoU to provide strong
network systems for telecommunications operations and high speed
internet services to several Indian cities, including future smart
cities.
The Director General of C-DAC, Hemant Darbari, and Dinesh Chandra
Dwivedi, Principal General Manager, BSNL, signed the MoU on Thursday in
Pune. The agencies will focus on designing citizen-centric Information
and Communications Technology (ICT)-based solutions for all government
enterprises and Urban Local Bodies (ULB).
As part of this understanding between the two agencies respectively
dealing with technology and telecom services, ICT products will be
designed and deployed to suit the requirements of every city in a range
of sectors.
Some of the key areas where ICT solutions will be developed include
transport, solid waste management, water supply, health, tourism,
environment, agriculture, climate and earth sciences, housing, sewage,
education, e-governance, storm water drainage, disaster management,
social welfare, culture and heritage, citizen participation, big data
analytics and digital infrastructure.
“This technological development for very specific problems will be
provided pan-India, where we will engage with ULBs or municipal
corporations to understand their problems. Initially, the system will
cover cities in Maharashtra and talks are ongoing with municipal
corporations of Pune, Nashik, Nagpur and Kolhapur. Then it will be
expanded to other states,” said a senior C-DAC officer who is aware of
this development.
Two of the key issues faced by Pune city are transport and solid
waste management. In fact, C-DAC has been the ‘Knowledge Partner’ of
Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) since September 2015 and has been
working on developing and testing solutions to these two issues.
Under the Smart City Mission, all technological solutions need to be
routed through a Master System Integration (MSI) that will be
responsible for the dissemination of technological solutions. In this
case, BSNL has been identified as MSI for the Smart Cities, mainly due
to its existing strong infrastructural base.
BSNL will broadly provide services like system integration through
channel partners, internet leased line services, internet data centres,
mobile-based services like 4G, 3G, GPRS, international bandwidths, WI-FI
for international and local services, point-to-point and point-to-multi
point lease circuits.
When asked about its partnership with BSNL, C-DAC members involved in
the project said the telecom giant has well-established networks.
“BSNL has an established multi-gigabit, multi-protocol convergent IP
infrastructure available that can provide convergent services like
voice, data and video through the same broadband access network. So, it
will be convenient to supply the services to the public,” said another
member from C-DAC.
Today, BSNL has basic telephone capacity of at least 36.42 million
lines, 7.13 million Wireless Local Loop (WLL) capacity, 95.96 million
GSM capacity. It also has 34,727 fixed telephone exchanges in the
country, close to 10,000 Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) towers
supported by 102 satellite stations spanning a network of 646 districts
in 4,519 cities and over 6.25 lakh villages.