Aksh Optifibre to set up optifibre network for armed forces

Aksh Optifibre Ltd has won an order worth Rs102 crore ($17 million) to supply Optical Fibre Cables (OFC) for India's Defence Network For Spectrum (NFS) project.

The company has emerged as the lowest bidder along with the state-run telco ITI for 'Package F' of the project, which mainly covers West Bengal, Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand, Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Sikkim.

The companies will supply and handle end-to-end deployment of an optical fibre cable backbone network for India's armed forces.

The Defence NFS project consists of 57,015 km of OFC routes, which is divided into seven packages and is planned to be completed in 18 months. The project will be handled on a turnkey basis, intended for rollout of a nationwide OFC network and will be owned and operated by the defence services under the project implementation core group (PICG) of the defence ministry.

This mega network will be deployed with OFC technology, which will form the backbone of optical highway infrastructure and serve as a highly-resilient and reliable communication media for the defence sector.

''The company has extensive capability in manufacturing custom made cables for different requirements and geographies and is more than delighted to be a part of the strategically important NFS project of the Indian Armed Forces,'' said Chetan Choudhari, Managing Director of Aksh Optifibre.

''Aksh has had a long and successful history of being associated with mega telecom projects of the government and has added incremental value to each assignment that it has undertaken. This time as well, Aksh developed a custom cable design to suit the robust needs to the network without compromising on the strength of the cables, making them highly durable & maintenance free,'' he added.

The defence telecom project is crucial as the armed forces will migrate all their communication needs to this alternate OFC network and free more bandwidth for commercial telephony.

The armed forces had vacated some 3G airwaves in August 2010, after they were assured that the telecom department would keep its side of the deal in rolling out an alternate communications network.

This had enabled the department of telecommunications to auction 3G airwaves four years ago.

The mega communications network that BSNL will build for the armed forces has several key packages such as the OFC backbone, network management systems and a satellite network and will cost more than Rs 13,000 crore.