RailTel OFC projects to go on stream by June

Kavitha Venkatraman

Chennai, Dec 10: First stage of the prestigious, multi-crore optic fibre cable (OFC) project of RailTel Corporation of India Ltd in the southern region is likely to go on stream by June next. These projects were originally scheduled to be completed by the end of the current fiscal.

RailTel, the telecom arm of the Indian Railways has plans to lay OFC for about 35,343 km along the railway track covering the length and breadth of the country for faster and better communication, in four phases. In the first phase, the company was to lay OFC for about 10,020 km across the country.

And so far cable laying works for about 2,589 km have been completed. The project cost is estimated to be around Rs 7 lakh per km. Top officials in the southern railway (SR) told The Financial Express that the southern railway portion of the Phase-I project of Railtel is likely to be delayed by three months.

“Though the project is originally slated to be completed by March 2002, we will be able to complete our works only by June next, as the railway is also handling other works of SR besides the RailTel project”, sources said.

As part of the Phase-I of the RailTel project, SR had to lay OFC between Chennai-Gudur section covering about 136 km, Chennai-Arakkonam-Renigunta section covering 135 km and Bangalore-Dharmavaram section for about 210 km. Sources said the Bangalore-Dharmavaram section would be completed as per schedule on March 2002, as they have already laid cables for about 120 km.

However, in the other two sections the railways have just awarded contracts and are hopeful to complete them latest by June next. The overall investment for these three sections alone is close to about Rs 38 crore. The Chennai-Gudur OFC project is expected to cost Rs 9 crore, while Chennai-Arakkonam-Renigunta would cost Rs 7 crore and Bangalore-Dharvaraman Rs 22 crore. Seventy per cent of the multi crore project is being funded by RailTel and the remaining 30 per cent by Indian Railways.