SWAN gets Cabinet Committee approval

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) has approved the proposal to
establish State Wide Area Networks (SWAN) across the country in 29 states and
six Union Territories (UTs) in a phased manner to enable seamless delivery of
G2G and G2C converged services-voice, data and video-in the country.

The CCEA has also hiked the initial Rs 1,000-crore plan announced by the
Union Mini-ster for Communications and IT Dayanidhi Maran in Octo-ber last to a
total estimated outlay of Rs 3334 crore for the entire country. The CCEA has
also decided that part of the total outlay, Rs 2005 crore would be used to
provide as Grant-in-aid, to be expended over five years from the date of
sanction of individual project by the Department of Information Technology (DIT),
beginning FY 2004-05.

CCEA has also given its approval for the constitution and composition of the
Empo-wered Committee with the delegation of administrative and financial powers
to app-rove individual SWAN project of the States within the provi-sions laid
down in the SWAN Policy Guidelines by the DIT. As a part of this policy, states
would need to furnish propo-sals to DIT for establish-ment of SWANs. DIT will
meet the entire capital and operational costs of the network for a per-iod of
five years except band-width cost, which has to be borne by the states. A State
may opt to implement the SWAN either through NIC or through any other agency
selected by it.

The policy states that states will have to provide band-width of at least 2
Mbps up to block level by entering into contracts with BSNL or any other
operator. The band-width cost has to be borne by the states.

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