K-FON balked; market seized by 5G

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Despite the introduction of 5G high-speed internet in Kerala, the K-FON launched five years ago by the state government has not reached anywhere. The K-FON, which is nowhere near 5G in terms of speed, is on the verge of becoming obsolete. K-FON is a project that buys internet service from private companies and provides it free of charge to poor people's homes and government offices through its own cable network.

Through the K-FON project, which started foundation work in 2017, it was promised that within three years, 20 lakh households will have a free internet connection and 30,000 government offices will have an internet network. Officials say that the K-FON system is 90 percent complete. 18360.38 km of 22836.17 km optical fiber network has been completed. The network has been established in 18,174 offices. Of these, 11,288 offices have been connected. But a line is needed everywhere to provide free connection to the people. Realizing that this was not possible, the government initially said that only 14,000 people would be given free internet connection. It was also limited to 100 poor people in one assembly constituency. Yet no one was given the same.

1028.8 crore rupees have been approved for the implementation of the K-FON project. However, a contract of 9 years including 2 years for construction work and 7 years for operation and maintenance was awarded to Bharat Electronics Limited. The contract amount awarded for this is Rs 1531 crore. Of this, Rs 1,168 crore was awarded for construction work and Rs 363 crore for operation & maintenance. 70 percent of Rs 1168 crore is provided by KIIFB. 100 crores have been allocated in the next year's state budget to speed up K-FON.

Criteria that have become a problem

The list of beneficiaries should be prepared by the local bodies. So far the list of 6581 people has been received. The network system in that area is not guaranteed enough to be available to those on the list. A connection can be provided only if the area is close to the main line crossing. Houses selected according to government norms are mostly very inland. The criteria set without taking into account the limitations of the K-FON system became a pitfall in effect. A situation where you are unable to serve anyone.

Why it backfired

1. Airtel and Jio 5G services have been launched in Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, and Kozhikode cities. They say that they will deliver connections to the entire state within a few months.

2. K-FON provides fast connections of 10 to 15 megabytes per second. The speed of 5G is 1000 megabytes per second.

3. K-FON is unable to set up relay centers, access centers, optical fiber subcenters, etc. as required.

• K-FON will provide one and a half GB of free data per household. Speed ​​15 megabytes per second
• The speed of Jio 5G in Kerala is 1009 megabytes per second.