Debesh Das: Think big

Calcutta, Aug. 13: Bengal will get its first cable landing station near Digha.

Such a facility is a parking space for undersea cables that carry bandwidth, an essential input for IT companies. The other landing stations are in Chennai, Kochi and Mumbai.

The availability of such a facility will reduce bandwidth costs for software and BPO companies in the state by 10-30 per cent.

The project had been in the pipeline for four years, with Haldia being the preferred site of the state government.

However, the Centre opted for a location near Digha following the recommendations of a feasibility study done by the Union telecom ministry.

Bengal IT minister Debesh Das said, “I met A. Raja (Union telecom minister) today in Delhi and he informed me about the change of the location. It will be near Digha, as suggested by the study. He also assured me that the project would be expedited and expected it to be up and running in the next few months.” Das spoke to The Telegraph from Delhi.

Das’s meeting with Raja came after Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee enquired about the status of the project in a letter to the telecom minister a month ago.

The project was announced in March 2006 after three years of negotiations between the Centre and the state government.

One reason for the lengthy negotiations was the lobbying by southern politicians to locate the facility in Chennai.

In the Rs 200-crore project, submarine cables will bring bandwidth from Singapore to the state. There are many global consortiums that manage these fibre optic cables such as SEA-ME-WE-4 or the South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 project.

Das today sought Raja’s intervention in the expansion of the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) at Salt Lake. The state government wants the STPI to build infrastructure on the private-public-partnership model over another three lakh sq ft at its city campus.