Betting big on the government's fibre-to-home broadband plans, Radius Infratel today said it will

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invest around Rs 500 crore in the current fiscal for expansion, research and development of its business and technology.

"We will invest Rs 500 crore during current fiscal year (FY'12). These funds will be raised through loans and debt, we are currently talking with some financial institutions for the same," Radius Infratel Director Ashok Bansal said.

Radius' shared FTTH (fiber-to-the-home) infrastructure called NANO (Neutral Access Network Operations) is designed to simultaneously carry all IP-based services from multiple service providers (triple play and VAS), building management services (like intercom, surveillance feed, access control) and other customer-specific applications like home automation and much more to each household on a single strand of fibre.

"Currently, the company is working with Bharti airtel and are in talks with several other operators and service providers to partner with them," Bansal added.

The company is currently expanding in Delhi and surrounding areas including, Gurgaon, Noida and Dwarka. It plans to open its new office in Mumbai and Punjab within two months.

The company, which is in expansion mode, plans to hire around 100 middle and senior-level employees during the current fiscal.

"Currently our workforce strength is around 95 people and we are planning to hire around 100 more at the middle and senior level during this fiscal," Bansal added.

The government is expected to connect five lakh villages with Internet broadband services under the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) in next two years.

The government earlier had proposed creating a NOFN for providing broadband connectivity to rural areas initially up to panchayats.

Last year, telecom regulator Trai had floated a consultation paper suggesting that optical fibre should be laid to connect 3.75 lakh villages having a population of 500 or more.

The project could be funded by the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme for non-skilled work and from the Universal Services Obligation Fund for material and equipment.

The optical fibre network would help various service providers and users get broadband through a variety of wired and wireless solutions. Till now, the broadband facility has been limited to metros and major cities.

There were nine million broadband subscribers at the end of April, 2010, of which a mere 5 per cent were in rural areas. The government had set a target of 20 million broadband subscribers by 2010 as part of the Broadband Policy 2004.