RailTel to create 'Edge Data Centres' at 102 locations across India

RailTel, a Central Government PSU, said on Wednesday it will create 'edge data centres' at Railway premises across 102 locations, especially Tier-2 and Tier-3 towns in the country.

RailTel, a Central Government PSU, said on Wednesday it will create 'edge data centres' at Railway premises across 102 locations, especially Tier-2 and Tier-3 towns in the country. The 'edge data centres' will be set up by RailTel jointly with partners.

The prospective Business Associates/partners should be a company registered in India. This activity will entail an investment opportunity of around Rs 500 crore, RailTel said in a statement. The process to establish the edge data centres has been set in motion with the floating of Expression of Interest (EOI) inviting the industry to partner in this exercise, it said.

Edge data centres are small data centres located at the edge of the network, where they are closer to end-users and devices. Having such kind of facility at the edge would enable faster performance and lower latency as organisations will not have to move the data to far-flung data centres to process it. RailTel is one of the largest neutral telecom infrastructure providers in the country owning a Pan-India Optical Fiber Cable (OFC) network of over 60,000 RKM along Railway track. The OFC network covers important towns and cities of the country and several rural areas.

This new initiative of RailTel will give a boost to the Indian Government's mission of Digital India. Under the proposed plan, the initial capacity of the envisioned edge data centre at each location can be of around 20 Racks (5 KW to 10 KW each). However, edge data centres 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 said.

Edge data centres will enable RailTel to deploy IT infrastructure for 'caching' of popular contents to improve the experience of RailWire broadband customers as cached contents will then be served locally instead of travelling a long stretch of Network. Similarly, IT infrastructure for 'peering' with content players can also be deployed in these edge data centres which would improve cost economics for delivery of contents, RailTel said.

"With the help of such localised Data Centres, rural areas can be served with low latency applications related to digital skills, financial inclusions, digital literacy etc," Puneet Chawla, Chairman and Managing Director of RailTel said in a statement. "The edge date centres will provide better experience and aid in the adoption of digital services by the population of these areas and thus contributing to the digital economy. The move will be another important step towards the path of digital transformation. It will also provide an opportunity to local professionally skilled manpower to participate in this transformation," Chawla added. (ANI)

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