The Centre has appealed to the states for their active participation in the nation-wide rollout of optical fibre project. The appeal was made by the Minister for Communication and Information Technology Kapil Sibal at a function in New Delhi today.

16 states have signed MoU with the Department of Telecom and the Special Pupose Vehicle called Bharat Broadband Network Limited in the presence of Mr Sibal.

The National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) aims at connecting 2 lakh 50 thousand gram panchayants with high speed optical fibre network by December 2013.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr Sibal described the signing of tripartite MoUs as historic and asked the states to provide incentives to the manufacturers of electronic appliances to make the products affordable to aam admi. He said the states should start preparing the digitized data to be uploaded on the electronic highway system.

The Minister said the Centre will soon convene a meeting of the Information Technology ministers to finalize the process for uploading standardised data. The Minister hoped that by 2020, all electronic goods will be manufactured in the country.