RailTel will join the Digital India mission. To give boost to the mission, RailTel will create several “Edge Data Centres” in rural and semi-urban areas in different parts of the country jointly with partners. This initiative will accelerate the pace of digital transformation and efficient digital delivery in remote areas. As per information, RailTel is seeking partners to establish such Edge Data Centres in the Railway premises/land across 102 locations especially Tier-2 and Tier-3 towns. The process to establish these Edge Data Centres has been set in motion with the floating of Expression of Interest (EOI) inviting industry to partner in this exercise. Edge Data Centres will enable RailTel to deploy IT infrastructure for ‘caching’ of popular contents to improve experience of RailWire broadband customers as cached contents will then be served locally instead of travelling long stretch of Network. Similarly IT infrastructure for ‘peering’ with content players can also be deployed in these Edge Data Centres.
Under the proposed plan, Initial capacity of envisioned Edge Data Centre at each location can be of around 20 Racks (5 KW to 10 KW each). However, Edge Data Centre with variable rack and power density can be explored as per the requirement and availability of space, power and other factors at individual locations. RailTel already has 2 UPTIME USA certified Data Centres-one in National Capital Region (Gurugram) and other Secunderabad. The current subscriber base of RailTel is around 4.4 Lakhs and it will further rise sharply with the coming up of such Edge Data Centre.
According to Puneet Chawla, CMD, RailTel ,with the help of such localized Data Centres, rural areas can be served with low latency applications related to digital skills, financial inclusions, digital literacy etc."The Edge Date Centres will provide better experience and aid in adoption of digital services by the population of these areas and thus contributing to digital economy," he added. "It will also provide an opportunity to local professionally skilled manpower to participate in this transformation”. said Chawla. RailTel a "Mini Ratna" Central Public Sector Enterprise, is one of the largest neutral telecom infrastructure providers in the country owning a Pan-India optic fiber network covering several towns & cities and rural areas of the country. RailTel has around 9300+ Points of Presence (PoPs) and extensive optical fiber connectivity along the Railway Tracks and across the premises of Indian Railways, which makes the basic infrastructure readily available for the setting up of such Edge Data Centres. RailTel shall have the responsibility of providing the telecom/internet connectivity to the Selected Business Associate.
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