Chandigarh : The Haryana government has announced its right of way (RoW) policy and agreement for laying of communications backbone. The policy, which was approved here on Tuesday by the cabinet which met under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala, seeks to encourage distance education through information technology tools, IT-enabled services for providing large scale employment and to take Internet to rural areas at the earliest. The recommendations of the cabinet sub-committee constituted under the chairmanship of finance minister Sampat Singh were the basis of the policy. With the announcement of the policy, Haryana becomes the first state in the country where each infrastructure provider will offer 10 per cent cash-less equity in the company laying the backbone to one of the designated organisations in the state.The government has decided to frame a policy and to issue guidelines for issuing permissions to the infrastructure providers, desirous of implementing optic fibre projects in the state. This policy covered only laying of underground communication infrastructure on the land belonging to any agency, including national highways. Free right of way will be provided to any applicant infrastructure provider (existing or future) on non-exclusive basis. The period of validity of right of way permission will be co-terminus with the validity of license or registration with the department of telecom as the case might be. However, if the applicant infrastructure provider was not granted license or not registered as infrastructure provider the state government might grant letter of intent (LoI) with the condition that the company shall have to obtain the required license or get the required registration from the department of telecom within 90 days of the issue of the LoI.
This was further subject to the department of telecom regulation or other laws and rules applicable in this regard. Each infrastructure provider will have to provide reliable connectivity to all villages, within 36 months. The time frame for providing connectivity between the state headquarters and district headquarters will be 12 months from the date of signing the agreement, between district headquarters to sub division, tehsil or blocks was further 12 months and up to last mile (all villages) another 12 months.
Each infrastructure provider will provide free bandwidth and dedicated pair of optic fibre to the extent decided by the government from time to time for the usage of the state government, its departments, boards, corporations and agencies.
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