Andhra Pradesh State FiberNet Limited


The Andhra Pradesh State FiberNet Limited is a project initiated in October 2015 to provide on demand, affordable and end-to-end broadband connectivity of 15 to 50 Mbit/s for all households and 1 to 10 Gbit/s for all institutions and multi-dwelling units by 2018. Its was an ambitious project of N. Chandrababu Naidu to connect every household & provide cable television, phone and high speed internet at low cost and was launched by President of India on 27 DEC 2017 in an ceremony conducted in the capital city of Amaravati. It is completely owned by Government of Andhra Pradesh but works under partnership with Cisco Systems.

Implementation

A.P.Fiber Grid Phase-I is to set up a high-speed Optical Fiber Network Infrastructure across the 13 Districts of the State with the help of assets of the Electricity Department. A 24-Core ADSS Optical Fiber Cable will be laid for a length of around over the electrical poles with its back-end electronic systems being set up at the Points of Presence at 2449 identified sub-stations. Phase one of the AP Fibre Grid Project for broadband connectivity is expected to be ready by July-end. Against the target of laying around of aerial optical fiber cable across the State, of cable pulling has been completed as of June 2016. A Network Operations Centre has also been commissioned at Visakhapatnam to look after the project in the state.

Network

The network consists of a ring architecture which is distributed across all thirteen districts of Andhra pradesh. It is a 1.3 Tbit/s dense Wavelength-division multiplexing based optical fiber network as a state ring with each district ring as a 100G DWDM subnet.

Vision

It has been incorporated under the Companies Act, 2013. To establish a network infrastructure, accessible on a non-discriminatory basis broadband connectivity. To enable the realization of Vision of Digital AP, in partnership with the Government of India and the private sector. APSFL aims to promote Digital affordable, high-speed broadband connectivity to households and corporate users and by deepening the reach of Internet in the rural areas. Its main motto is to provide 15 Mbit/s connections to 1.3 crore households and 100 Mbit/s to 1 Gbit/s connections for business enterprises. This network also provides IPTV with 250 channels and a landline telephone for unlimited free calling to APfiber phones within Andhra pradesh.

Status

As of September 2018, APSFL has over 5,00,000 users. Although it has missed many of the initial deadlines and targets, the user base is steadily expanding. About 3150 schools, universities and Government offices are also connected to the network. The network also sees average traffic of 40 Gbit/s with its users.