The DoT will pick up 45 per cent equity in the form of fibre. Carnegie Mellon's equity will be 49 per cent in the form of equipment like routers, computers while 6 per cent will be held by the leading Indian educational institutions like Indian Institute of Information Technology and Indian Institute of Science. The project work of the company is expected to begin from December this year and would be completed in next three years.

Sankhya Vahini India would coordinate the design, create national backbone and set up the urban links. This would require lighting of existing dark fibres, laying new bundles of advanced fibres, enhancing the capacity of existing fibres to larger bandwidths, multiplexing and aggregation to free a few dibres exclusively for the backbone. The company would also work with educational instutions in India and the US to create and make available the necessary educational and training content to the network.

The Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services would provide 10,000 sq ft initially and later upto 40,000 sq ft on a rental basis to the Sankhya Vahini India in the Bandra-Kurla complex. The Sankhya Vahini India has been registered with the Registrar of Companies while the union cabinet is expected to give its final nod in the next meeting for the establishment of company and carrying out the implementation of project.

VS Arunachalam, distinguished services professor at the Carnegie Mellon University briefed the newly-appointed chief minister Vilasrao deshmukh and the deputy chief minister Chhagan Bhujbal on Wednesday. The state government has agreed to provide necessary support for the project.

Mantralaya sources told The Financial Express that the proposed network dedicated exclusively for data communications will form a 10,000 miles national backbone at a speed over 1,000-10,000 times currently available in the country.

This backbone will initially connect over 10 metropolitan centres and over 100 universities, colleges and institutions of higher learning.This backbone with high bandwidth above 2.5 GBPS (billion bits per second) would meet the data communication needs of other organisations in commercial, financial and manufacturing sectors. In the future, users may possibly include Internet Service Providers.

The proposed bandwidths dedicated exclusively for data would place India on par with the US and other advanced technological nations in the world. The bandwidth which would be in multi gigabits, would be continuously upgraded to stay at the cutting edge of technology.

Moreover, the company would also set up a series of Urban Data Networks linked to the national backbone. This would be implemented by freeing a few existing fibres for this network and by laying additional fibres with enhanced bandwidth capability. Thes networks would provide scalable high speed connection points and support access to a wide range of end-users.