The MoU was a result of the concurrence given by the Information Technology Task Force in September 1998 pursuing the proposal of establishing High Speed National Data Network operating in the range of 2.5 to 10 GBPS (gigabits per second) and to connect it to international university network being established by CMU, Pittsburgh, USA. The IT Task Force recommended the implementation of the program within nine months, converting this program as a National Mission.

It is estimated that the approximately $150 million program will build a network topology of approximately 16,000 kilometers with 8 to 10 Nodes located at major cities and 25 high bandwidth Points of Presence (POPs), extendable to 100. The bandwidth of Sankhya Vahini will be in multi gigabits and continuously upgraded to stay at the cutting edge of technology.

After the grant of requisite approvals by the Government, DoT would initiate steps for setting up the Joint Venture Company in India in which participation of IUNet Inc. would be within the framework of existing policy directives as approved by the Government.

IUNet (India) will be set up in partnership with Department of Telecommunications in association with its corporations and leading Indian educational institutions including Indian Institute of Information Technology , Hyderabad. Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and all the six Indian Institutes of Technology. The participation from the educational institutions is essential to ensure definitive, substantial and continuing commitment from Indian educational institutions to the development, evolution and use of advanced networking facilities. They are also needed to develop educational training and research content.

This network will be primarily a data network forming the National Backbone and will initially connect at least 10 metropolitan centers and over 100 universities, institutions of higher learning and research centers. As the speed of the network will be more than 1000-10,000 times the speed currently available in the country, it will not only be able to meet the research, teaching and learning requirements of educational institutions, but also the high bandwidth data communication needs of other organizations in the commercial, manufacturing and financial sectors.

It would then become possible to access educational, training and digital libraries providing content that are available from some universities in the US and also from outstanding educational and research institutions in India. An easy guaranteed and affordable access to the network would accelerate the development of applications for distance learning, job-oriented training, upgrading and re-orientation of skills, healthcare, training of educators and numerous other novel applications.

The network will be set up in phases with the first two phases consisting of the following:

Create a National Internet Backbone by freeing a few fibers exclusively for this programming from the existing DoT network to support a bandwidth in the range of 2.5 GBPS to 10 GBPS. The proposed bandwidths dedicated exclusively for data would place India on par with the US and other advanced technological nations in the world.