India to rollout State Wide Area Network (SWAN)

India may soon rollout its ambitious SWAN project in the first week of March. SWAN (State Wide Area Network) is a converged backbone network for voice, video and data communications across States. As per sources Government will start the SWAN project by rolling out it in selected North East states. SWANs across the country will cover at around 50000 departments through its 1 million route kilometres of communication links. Department of IT (DIT) in Government of India is implementing an approved Scheme known as State Wide Area Network (SWAN) Scheme, envisaged to create such a connectivity in each State, to bring speed, efficiency, reliability and accountability in overall system of Government-to-Government (G2G) functioning. The SWAN Scheme for 29 States & 6 Union Territories, was approved by Govt. of India, in March 2005 to set up State Wide Area Networks (SWAN), interconnecting each State / UT Head Quarter with District Head Quarter and below each District Head Quarter with the Block Head Quarters with minimum 2 Mbps leased line. Leading telecom PSU, BSNL is preferred Bandwidth Service Provider for SWAN Scheme across the country and will generate additional source of revenue from state governments. More than 70 per cent of the SWAN roll-outs currently underway are being deployed with Cisco’s support.