R K Infratel is providing bandwidth services in retail and corporate level connectivity across Gujarat as well as in other cities like Nasik, Nagpur, Pune, Bengaluru, Indore, etc. Rajendra Sheth, Chairman and Managing Director, R K Infratel Ltd, shares the company’s vision in conversation with Elets News Network (ENN).
What is your vision for Smart Cities Mission?
The Government of India has envisaged a plan and identified the Smart Cities in the country to place them with the global perspective. Looking at the Indian terrain, population density, present and future challenges in terms of complexity and spread of the cities, I feel there must be a robust and futuristic vision to combat the challenges of future for civic authorities to maintain the city as Smart City. Apart from the technological advancement and ensuring daily life of citizens become easy and facilitation of smoother transportation, clean environment, education system, waste management, etc, the mission will be fulfilled only when it reaches the end citizen. I urge all the stakeholders, policymakers and partners to collaboratively draft the plan for Smart Cities, make an ideal Smart City that would be eco-efficient, cost efficient and within the reach of the last man in terms of scalability and affordability for him.
Can you brief us about the solutions you are providing for Smart Cities in Gujarat?
We have been instrumental in and copioneer in establishing the Safe Surat CCTV Project way back in 2012-13, by providing our city wide Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) network to connect all the CCTV cameras placed across the city. They are still working with 100 per cent uptime with the connectivity of 10,000 mbps capacity, protecting Surat, helping city police to vigil, prevent and even detect many crimes. Thus, by controlling crime rate at lower scale, helping citizens at large. We have also laid the OFC network in Ahmedabad for all Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) junction connectivity in collaboration with Sify in 2014. Apart from Smart Cities, we have focussed on developing Smart villages too. We initiate the process, visit Gram Panchayat of the surrounding villages of Surat, spread the State Government guidelines for Smart Villages and motivate the grass root level community to go for ‘smartness’, by attaining the various milestone of public health, sanitation, zero open defecation, Sauchalaya Abhiyan and many more.
What is the bandwith of OFC provided to Surat?
We are providing our bandwidth services in retail and corporate level connectivity across Gujarat as well as in other cities like Nasik, Nagpur, Pune, Bangalore (Bengaluru), Indore, etc. Theoretically, maximum bandwidth limit of fiber optic cable is 1 Petabyte per core. But consumer grade equipment support 100 Gbps of bandwidth in cost effective manner. So depending on the use case, we can connect each point starting with 1 Mbps to 100Gbps of bandwidth. Apart from bandwidth network, architecture plays major role in operational sustainability of fiber optic network. We have designed core ring and middle ring with protected ring topology, so in the event of one path disruption services switch to other path in a fraction of second. We can have multiple path for critical locations like DC /CCC and minimum dual paths for zonal offices for cost optimisation. We have provided the same level of network connectivity to Surat Safe City Project with 10,000 Mbps of bandwidth capacity with 96 PoPs, 340 CCTV pole locations connectivity.
Brief us about your other projects.
We have all telecom services under one roof, viz, OFC laying, creating communication network, Bandwidth (ISP) provider. For data safety and redundancy we have our own data centre too. We mainly engage in telecom infra projects covering Pan India areas. We have a core team to design, lay OFC network, Operations and Management of the network, last mile connectivity, etc. Also, under this arm we are retailing the bandwidth to corporates, banks, colleges and other government institutions. We are also serving to protect data by serving customers to store their data, providing server space and copioneer location facility.
We have tier-III data centre with full-fledged required amenities to protect the data safe from any unwanted circumstances like hacking, data loss, attacking and power surges etc. Also, we are serving educational institutes in particular to manage all the activities of all level institutes, be it school, college or university. Also, it can be hooked up on Android and IOS platform so as to control and monitor the activities remotely. In a nutshell, the RK group’s presence is from establishment of connectivity infrastructure, bandwidth, data, application and SW storage to co-location and finally, in creation of SW/application and customised solutions for education field. Thus, the groups’ business covers the gamut of ICT area, enables me to visualise this group, emerging as a large conglomerate under the flagship of RK Infratel in near future.
Finally, we feel proud to have the business segments fullfilling the requirements for today and years to come, to connect the nation and thereby contributing to the futuristic growth and development of the corporate, government sector and population at large of India.