Port Blair, Sept 28: Mr. Kuldeep Rai Sharma, Member of Parliament, A&N Administration has requested the Minister of Communication & Information Technology, Govt. of India, New Delhi to consider for providing a parallel internet connectivity through OFC system between Diglipur, North & Middle Andaman and Digha in West Bengal which is the shortest distance between the places to ensure uninterrupted internet connectivity even if the other grid of existing OFC between Chennai – Port Blair failed due to any unforeseen reasons.
He expressed his gratitude to the Government regarding the start of CANI OFC system between Chennai and Port Blair started on 10th August, 2020, which herald a new era in the history of A&N Islands as it will facilitate seamless net connectivity in seven selected Islands having huge potential for tourism development. In addition to the tourism development, the high bandwidth internet connectivity which the CANI network promises would hopefully usher in the arrival of a large pool of mainland based IT & ITes investors into these Islands. This will surely cater to the employment requirement of thousands of local educated unemployed youths who hitherto take an exodus to mainland cities like Chennai and Banglore for IT and related jobs.
However, he said that while the high bandwidth internet would be a core requirement for the IT & ITeS industry, the single CANI OFC network will not boost the investors’ sentiment in the absence of a parallel network as believed by industry veterans. Aspiring industrialists in IT & ITeS sector are concerned over any sudden breakdown or failure of the existing CANI OFC network which will paralyze the IT & ITeS industries besides other digital services like e.banking, e.governance, e.trading, e.procurement, e.teaching etc. Even a single day of outage over breakdown of CANI OFC would prove costly for the industry as feared by the industry veterans. As such, additional connectivity would insulate the industry against temporary outages and connectivity failure.
Keeping in view of above, the Member of Parliament requested the Minister of Communication & Information Technology to provide a parallel internet connectivity through undersea OFC cable to A&N Islands from Digha in West Bengal to Diglipur (North & Middle Andaman) a shortest route in addition to the existing CANI OFC cable which will ensure uninterrupted connectivity even if the other grids has failed due to any an unforeseen reason.