Centre assures to upgrade IT infrastructure in NE

Agartala, Nov 25: The Centre has assured the North East states to develop the IT infrastructure in the region and announced to achieve a substantial subscriber base there by 2010.

Official sources said here today that the ministry has embarked upon a programme of setting up 1,00,000 Community Service Centres (CSCs) to cater to e-governance requirements of 6,00,000 villages across the country in a phased manner.

Meanwhile, a special programme was launched through Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) for providing support for setting up and managing 631 infrastructure sites spread over 70 districts in NE region for providing mobile services including other Wireless Access Services (WAS) in the specified rural and remote areas, where there is no existing fixed wireless or mobile coverage.

The ministry had also approved a scheme for providing support for establishing 100,000 Broadband, Internet enabled, Common Services Centres (CSCs) in rural areas of NE, which would be implemented in a public private partnership model, officials stated adding that the support for region under the scheme had been pegged at 75 per cent of the normative value as against national value of 33 per cent.

UNI