The decision was made at the task force meeting on Saturday chaired by its co-chairman and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu and co-chairman MGK Menon.

The meeting was attended by the members of the task force, representatives of Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai and Mumbai, Indian Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Carnegie Mellon University USA, the department of telecommunications and the governments of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.

It was felt that IU Net would meet the growing educational challenges and give a fillip to capitalising of knowledge and creativity to generate wealth.With the commissioning of IU Net with 2.5 to 10 giga bytes per second bandwidth network, India will become the second country after USA to acquire such high-speed databroad band network. The task force has set a timeframe of nine months for the launch of IU Net.

The network will be launched by a consortium of two corporations IU Net India and IU Net USA. The Indian network will be formed by DoT, IITs of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, IIS Bangalore and IIT Hyderabad as partners. The US network has already been established with Carnegie Mellon University and a leading telecom company as the shareholders.

DoT has agreed to provide two optic fibre strands exclusively for IU Net. IU Net USA will provide optical, networking, software and advanced application technologies to the programme.

To start with, eight to 10 major cities will be networked under the IU Net which will be equipped with two or more international gateways to provide for reliable high bandwidth international connectivity. It will be run on commercially sustainable basis.

It will provide a national backbone for data, technology, equipment and educational and informational resources to demonstrate thefeasibility of advanced data networking concept and to address major educational challenges facing the nation.

In conjunction with other similar international networks, IU Net will catalyze the development of applications for distance education, specific job-oriented training, upgrading and reorientation of skills, healthcare and training of educators, besides facilitating the state-of-the-art educational initiatives, it was felt.