Context: Recently, the Prime Minister will inaugurate submarine Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) cable connectivity to Andaman & Nicobar Islands (A&NI).
Key Points

• The Cable will connect Chennai and Port Blair. It will also connect Port Blair to Swaraj Dweep (Havelock), Little Andaman, Car Nicobar, Kamorta, Great Nicobar, Long Island, and Rangat.
• About 2300 Kms of Submarine OFC cable has been laid at a cost of about Rs 1224 Crore.
• The submarine OFC link will deliver bandwidth of 2 x 200 Gigabits per second (Gbps) between Chennai and Port Blair, and 2 x 100 Gbps between Port Blair and the other islands.
• Funded by the Government of India through the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF).
• Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) executed this project while Telecommunications Consultants India Limited (TCIL) is the Technical Consultants.

Benefits

• Provision of reliable, robust, and high-speed telecom and Broadband facilities in these Islands will be a landmark achievement from the viewpoint of consumers, as well as for strategic and governance reasons.
• 4G mobile services, which were constrained due to limited backhaul bandwidth provided via satellite will also see a major improvement.
• Enhanced telecom and Broadband connectivity will boost tourism and employment generation in the Islands, give an impetus to the economy and raise standards of living.
• Better connectivity will also facilitate delivery of 
• Small enterprises will benefit from opportunities in e-commerce, while educational institutions will utilize the enhanced availability of bandwidth for e-learning and knowledge sharing.e-Governance services such as telemedicine and tele-education.
• Business Process Outsourcing services and other medium and large enterprises will also reap the benefits of better connectivity.

Submarine communications cable

• A submarine communications cable is a cable laid on the sea bed between land-based stations to carry telecommunication signals across stretches of ocean and sea.
• The first submarine communications cables laid beginning in the 1850s carried telegraphy traffic.
• Currently 99% of the data traffic that is crossing oceans is carried by undersea cables.
• The reliability of submarine cables is high, especially when (as noted above) multiple paths are available in the event of a cable break.
• Also, the total carrying capacity of submarine cables is in the terabits per second, while satellites typically offer only 1,000 megabits per second and display higher latency.
• However, a typical multi-terabit, transoceanic submarine cable system costs several hundred million dollars to construct.

About the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF)

• USOF was formed by the Central Government to help fund projects to boost connectivity in rural areas.
• Established in 2002, it is headed by the USOF Administrator who reports to the Secretary, Department of Telecommunications (DoT).
• The money for this fund comes through a ‘Universal Access Levy,’ charged from the telecom operators on their Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) which are then deposited into the Consolidated Fund of India and require prior parliamentary approval to be dispatched.