By IANS
Mahabalipuram : A community project to provide high speed Internet, telemedicine, e-education and e-governance services to the rural areas of Tamil Nadu was made operational Wednesday in Vadugambadi, about 60 km south of state capital Chennai.
The facilities will be provided for the first time in India with the High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) and Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) systems under the Gramjyoti programme of the central government.
There are plans to bring about 100,000 villages under the fold of the programme. In Tamil Nadu, global technology firm Ericsson is providing the HSPA technology. But what was launched in Vadugambadi is only an experimental project.
“The Gramjyoti project here is just a pilot project. We chose Tamil Nadu because the GSM (Global System for Mobile technology) technology has already reached all these villages. We have used existing providers and existing infrastructure like towers. We can replicate this in thousands of other villages, once 3G (third generation mobile telephone technology) comes in and GSM is upgraded,” said P. Balaji, vice-president (marketing) of Ericsson, at the inauguration.
“Ericsson aims to help India’s rural population get first hand experience of broadband application,” Mats Granryd, managing director, Ericsson India, said.
Ericsson has set up the demo HSPA rural broadband network, covering 18 villages and 15 towns in Tamil Nadu on the east coast. Each such service station can be set up with a limited budget and will be sustainable, the promoters said.
People within the Gramjyoti project area will be able to use broadband applications such as telemedicine, e-education, e-governance and access high speed Internet services on the 3G platform.
The 18 empowered villages begin at Uthandi and end with Kokilamedu, about 30 km from each other, and include holiday resorts like Kovalam Bay, small towns like Mahabalipuram and Kancheepuram.
Ericsson has partnered with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), Bharati and several other telecom operators to provide the services.
The technology major has also tied up with Hand in Hand, an NGO, Edurite, an education content provider, One97, a commodities price/rate content provider, CNN, an entertainment content provider and the Apollo Hospitals Group to empower three village community centres and panchayat offices with high speed connectivity.
The other villages are connected by a mobile community centre, which carries personal computers, phones and audio-visual equipment to each of the villages on rotation.
Students from half a dozen schools in the area are already receiving e-education lessons in their schools from the Mahabalipuram hub, which is the common receiving station for the area.
Farmers and traders can get information on the prices of vegetables or fish by paying just Rs. 5. Forms for births, deaths and land records can also be accessed from the centres.
At the three community centres cum panchayat offices, the Apollo Hospital’s telemedicine service has provided a paramedic, who can do basic check ups for those needing medical attention.
More details about the Gramjyoti programme can be found on the website www.gramjyoti.in