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RailTel Corporation of India Ltd. under the Ministry of Railways plans to build high-speed Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) network using latest technologies on 42,000 route kilometres of railway tracks and covering more than 3500 railway stations in phased manner by March 31, 2008. The OFC has been laid on 27560 route kilometres of railway tracks till August 2005 out of which 23398 route kilometres has been commissioned connecting about 2200 towns/cities including metros, mini metros and other important places. The backbone network, with capacity of more than 2.5 GBPS, has been implemented in ring / mesh architecture ensuring always on services to the customers.
RailTel has an ambitious plan of providing cyber cafes/ Internet kiosks at Railway stations. The cafes will not only have Internet browsing but also Voice Over Internet Protocol and Video Conferencing. RailTel is in the process of deploying cyber cafes at the Railway stations and broadband services in important cities. RailTel is also offering broadband services, internet leased lines, corporate leased lines, multicast services, video on demand, bandwidth on demand in addition to VPN and other premium services on this network. Besides providing communication to the Railways, RailTel’s OFC network will be made available for other purposes like Internet, STD/ISD services in rural and remote areas and also commercial use surplus capacity.
With the launching of its nationwide Multi Protocol Label Switching - Internet Protocol ( MPLS-IP) network, RailTel is all set to capture corporate virtual private network (VPN) market in a big way. RailTel has built its backbone MPLS-IP network using M20 and M10 series high-end routers of Juniper, USA, connecting important cities in all parts of the country.
RailTel has already started generating revenue by allowing operators to use the OFC network. RailTel has earned Rs. 65.34 crore during 2004-05, which is 250% higher than that of Rs. 25.95 crore in 2003-04.
BSC/HK/CK
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