Meghalaya State Wide Area Network

Meghalaya State Wide Area Network

Background

The SWAN Scheme for 29 States & 6 Union Territories, at an estimated outlay of Rs. 3334 Crores, 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.

The objective of the Scheme is to create a secure close user group (CUG) government network for the purpose of delivering G2G and G2C services. The duration of project is 5 years with a pre-project implementation period of 18 months. The project is being implemented as a Central Sector Scheme with Rs. 2005 Crores as Grant-in-aid from Department of Information Technology and balance fund from the State Plan fund under Additional Central Assistance (ACA) allocation.

As a part of its ongoing effort to improve its efficiency and effectiveness through e-Governance, the Government of Meghalaya (GoM) has taken up the implementation of core infrastructure projects like CSC, SDC and SWAN on a high priority basis. The MSWAN is to be implemented on Build-Own-Operate and Transfer (BOOT) basis spread over a period of five years to provide Data connectivity, Voice and Video services to various offices of GoM and other locations as identified by the Govt. of Meghalaya. The Meghalaya Information Technology (MITS) has been retained by the Information Technology Department, Government of Meghalaya as the nodal agency for setting up and operating the Meghalaya State Wide Area Network (MSWAN).

Structure and Architecture

GoM intends to set up MSWAN to link Government Offices at State Head Quarter, Shillong, District Head Quarter, Sub-division Headquarter and Block Headquarter with each other. Thus 7 district headquarters, 8 sub-division headquarters and 39 block headquarters and more than 300 horizontal offices are planned to be connected through this network initially. A schematic diagram of the network is shown below.

The network will follow a hierarchical connectivity scheme as shown in the diagram. There will be three tires

• Tier 1 or Primary Tier consisting of the State Head Quarter
• Tier 2 or Secondary Tier consisting of the 7 District Head Quarters
• Tier 3 or Tertiary Tier consisting of 8 Sub Divisional and 39 Block Head Quarters

Within each tier there will be vertical and horizontal points of presence (POP) as shown. For vertical connectivity, leased links from BSNL would be used wherever available and for blocks where BSNL connectivity is not available, VSAT links will be used. For horizontal connectivity, a hybrid solution including Leased Lines, RF, OFC etc will be used depending on the location and best suited technology vis - a- vis cost. The proposed bandwidth requirement for each tire is shown below.

Progress till date

The Government of Meghalaya had appointed TCIL as the consultant for the project and based on the RFP prepared and the subsequent tendering process ORG Informatics had been selected as the implementation agency in 2008. A survey of all the vertical and horizontal POPs was carried out in February 2009. However, the contract with the implementation agency had to be subsequently cancelled due to their inability to start. Re-bidding for the selection of a new implementation agency has been carried out and Tata Consultancy Services Limited qualified for the same. And, therefore the LOI may perhaps be offered to them.