NKN plans to connect over 1500 institutes in next one year

Updated on: Thursday, February 16, 2012

The National Knowledge Network (NKN) of the Centre is planning to connect over 1,500 institutions across the country in the next one year, a senior official said here on Wednesday.

The NKN has already covered 670 institutions including universities, NITs, IITs, IIMs, CSIR labs and agriculture labs, R S Mani, Senior Technical Director with National Informatics Centre (NIC) told reporters on the sidelines of a seminar cum workshop on NKN.

NKN project aims at bringing together all stakeholders from science, technology, higher education, healthcare, agriculture and governance to a common platform. NIC is the implementing agency for the project.

The total project cost is Rs 5,990 crore which is to be utilised in 10 years and so far about Rs 1,500 crore has been spent, he said.

"Once the institutions are connected, if there is any collaborative work with IITs or NITs or universities, they will get a boost and at the end of the day, we will get products which can be used by everyone and probably the digital divide can be removed," Mani said.

In addition to network infrastructure, the NIC would try to provide common infrastructure which everyone can use. Principal Scientific Advisor to Government R Chidambaram, who addressed the gathering via video conference, said the applications of the NKN include delivery of distance education, collaborative research including with international partners, sharing of computing resources among others.

"The NKN is becoming an important part of the huge science infrastructure of India," he said.

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