RailTel, BSNL sign deal to share bandwidth

RailTel Corporation, the telecom undertaking of the railway ministry, and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd will sign a memorandum of understanding, which will enable the two public sector companies to share their optical fibre networks.

A similar arrangement would also be pursued with Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd, Railway Minister Nitish Kumar said. He was speaking at the inauguration of RailTel's first cyber cafe at the New Delhi railway station today.

RailTel plans to set-up such cafes at railway stations across the country. It will provide Internet connectivity to enterprises and market places around railway stations using its category 'A' Internet Service Provider (ISP)

licence, which is why the MoU with BSNL is crucial.

RailTel plans to set up 200 cyber cafes during the current financial year.

The PSU will run the cyber cafes through a franchisee arrangement. This is the first instance of the company adopting a revenue-sharing model.

It will get 59.4 per cent of the revenues earned by individual outlets. The telecom undertaking of the railway ministry has so far mobilised Rs 1 crore from its optical fibre cable (OFC) network set-up in Chennai, Bangalore and Secunderabad.

Kumar said there would be no problem in transferring the requisite assets of the ministry to Railtel for a smooth functioning of the PSU.