Kerala might just be the next in line to give Bangalore and Hyderabad, a run for their money. One need not wonder why. Facts speak for themselves. Not only does Kerala have the highest overall telephone density (7/100 residents) and the highest rural telephone density (5.1/100 residents), all of its 988 exchanges are digital, and are connected by optical fiber cable (OFC) to the National Internet Backbone. Besides, every single village Panchayat (1,468 in all) is within 3 kms of a digital exchange.

The good news does not end here. All the 14 district headquarters and 63 taluka headquarters are covered by this seamless network—which is being further strengthened by the OFC backbones being laid by Reliance, Bharti and Asianet. The above advantages, along with the ‘SEA-ME-WE-3’ and ‘SAFE’ submarine cable landings at Kochi with 15 Gbps bandwidth, place Kerala in a position to serve bandwidth-intensive IT industries. This infrastructure will be further augmented through a co-ordinated effort between the Government of Kerala, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and VSNL – who have entered into a tri-partite MoU that will leapfrog the state to the forefront with assured response, ‘quality of service’ and accountability for communication delivery.

Talking about Kerala and its IT initiatives, one cannot ignore the Technopark in Thiruvanthapuram, which is currently under the process of expansion. The completion of the new building ‘Gayatri’ has already added one lakh square feet to the complex and with another building ‘Bhavani’ coming up, another two lakh square feet will be added. The existing built-up space for the Technopark is approximately one million square feet. The first two buildings Pamba and Periyar have 28 modules with a combined built up space of 60,000 square feet housing 13 companies. The biggest building Nila has 126 modules with a built up space of 4,00,000 square feet, all of which are fully occupied.

There are other companies that have chosen to buy land and set up their own buildings in the complex. This includes Dataware Digital Labs, Tata Consultancy Services and now Hays Document Management (HMD), which has acquired 1.4 acres of land for its new building.

The software hub houses over 5000 professionals from 50-odd companies. The IT/ITES (IT enabled services) policy announced recently is expected to add to this number.

Most of the firms in the Technopark are not exclusively dependent on US markets. Hence the number of firms affected by the US slowdown was relatively low.

The Kerala government took some bold steps in the field of e-governance two years back, that have resulted in a number of initiatives deploying IT for improving administration, efficiency and better services.

The state had set up a monitoring committee comprising secretaries from various departments. Government had then identified 31 departments in the first phase for computerization considering their degree of direct public interface and revenue earnings. Motor vehicles, finance, treasury and registration departments were some of the ones who have been accorded priority in the initial stage. Other initiatives include Friends, IT@School, computerization of treasuries, smart ration card, IT deployment in examinations at the school-level, the establishment of the Indian Institute of Technology and Management-Kerala (IIITMK) etc.

If facts are to go by, then we surely are to see the state of Kerala emerging as an IT hub from merely being India’s beauty spot.

R Sreekumar/CNS in Thiruvanthapuram