Railtel to Switchover from BSNL to OFC network in phased manner
	14:45 IST

Lok Sabha Railtel Corporation of India Limited (RCIL) under the Ministry of Railways proposes to switch over from Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) network to the Railways’ Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) network for its Passenger Reservation System (PRS) in a phased manner as Railways have created their own OFC network spanning 31,000 Route Kilometres connecting 2896 towns/cities across India. Therefore, it will not only economical to run the PRS on Railways’ OFC network resulting in considerable saving on rental, but it will also enhance the reliability. However, BSNL’s network will also be utilized wherever there is unavailability of Railways’ own network or as a standby network for important PRS locations. This information was given by the Minister of State for Railways Shri R.Velu in written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha today. In reply to another question, the Minister said that RailTel has built a nationwide Wide Area Network (WAN), which can be used by corporate world for exchanging the information from their remotely located plants. This is based on VPN (Virtual Private Network) technology, which provides cost effective network connectivity to the user. The connectivity can be extended to large number of places along the RailTel’s OFC network, thus making this facility available in remote, rural and semi urban areas apart from large cities. This will generate revenue for Railways by utilizing the surplus capacity on its Telecommunication network. AKS/HK/TR