Hon’ble Minister for Communications and IT Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad on 12/01/2015 commissioned the first high speed rural broadband of India at the Idukki district in Kerala . The Hon’ble Chief Minister of Kerala Shri Oommen Chandy, Hon’ble Minister for Industry and IT, Govt. of Kerala Shri P. K. Kunhalikutty, Secretary Telecom Shri Rakesh Garg, Smt. Aruna Sundararajan IAS, Administrator, USOF & CMD, Bharat Broadband Network Limited, Shri. V S Achuthanandan, Opposition leader, Kerala etc. were present on this occasion.
With the commissioning of the NOFN network, Idukki district of Kerala has become the first in India to be connected with high speed rural broadband. Currently the District has a total of 8 Block Offices & 53 Gram Panchayats of which 8 Block Offices & 52 Gram Panchayats have been connected on Optical Fibre and one Gram Panchayat, namely Edamalakudy, is connected through VSAT. Edamalakudy, is a Tribal Gram Panchayat consisting of 26 Tribal villages with a population of around 2200. It is remotely located around 18 Kms from Pettimudi which is last point one can go in a vehicle. BSNL has made exceptional efforts in connecting this Gram Panchayat and now Broadband Internet as well as Mobile services are available over here. For the first time the villages under this Panchayat would be connected through Mobile phones and internet.
The establishment of NOFN would open up new avenues for Access service providers such as Telecom Service Providers, Internet Service Providers, and Cable TV operators, Content Providers etc. to launch next generation services and spur creation of local employment opportunities in a big way
