By TCN News,
New Delhi: National Knowledge Network (NKN) is a significant step towards ushering a knowledge revolution in the country,” said Kapil Sibal, Union Minister for Communication and Information Technology (C&IT) at the launching of the Logo and Website of the NKN on February 5.
Agreeing with the fact that technology is an enabler, Mr. Sibal emphasized that efforts beyond that are required to inform, educate and empower people of the country, “we need to work even harder to reap the benefits of this kind of network and put it to the use of the children and people in the remote parts of India.”
Union Minister for Human Resource Development and Communications and Information Technology, Kapil Sibal launching the website & logo of National Knowledge Network, in New Delhi on February 05, 2011. Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology, Sachin Pilot (in white dress) is also seen.
Speaking from Chicago through video conferencing, Sam Pitroda, Advisor to the Prime Minister on Public Information Infrastructure and Innovations emphasized the need to take fiber based connectivity to all the 2,50,000 panchayats and all the municipalities in the country.
National Knowledge Network (NKN) envisages connecting all higher centers of learning and research by bringing together all stakeholders from science, technology, higher education, healthcare, agriculture and governance to a common platform.
The implementation of NKN is currently underway and aims to accomplish connectivity to approximately 550+ institutions across the country by March, 2011. An outlay of Rs. 5,990 Crore has been approved for this project and it shall be implemented over a period of next two years and operated for over next 10 years.
In Phase-I, the Service Providers are connecting the NKN Points of Presence (PoPs) with 2.5 Gigabits bandwidth links. The bandwidth of these PoP’s shall be enhanced from 2.5G to 10G in the next year. So far, 76 links for the creation of the backbone for NKN project have been established. Also, connectivity with 200 edge links for various institutions has been accomplished.
Link: http://www.nkn.in/
[Photo: PIB]