Governance2.Org

LiveMint: Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), India’s biggest phone services firm, will piggyback a state-of-the-art wireless broadband network that it’s setting up for a large computer kiosk network for the Union government to offer up to 85,000 customers high-speed wireless broadband services.
A draft tender circulated by the state-owned BSNL among hardware vendors details a range of voice and value-added services to be offered. “The class of service features shall support…real-time and extended real-time voice and video traffic for voice over IP, fax, video conferencing and video on demand applications,” says the draft tender, indicating the type of services for which it plans to use the network.
The service will use the emerging Wimax (worldwide interoperability for microwave access), which is capable of data speeds of 10 megabits per second (mbps). In comparison, third generation (3G, a fast mobile phone standard) networks promise data throughput of 2mbps and data-friendly cellular networks deliver speeds of up to 512 kilobits per second.
The centres, to be run on the public call office model by village-based “entrepreneurs”, are being designed to provide government services such as issue of certificates, registration of births and deaths, along with commercial information. Read on …