The Central Government of India has taken an initiative called BharatNet, which will connect the gram-panchayats of 1.5 lakh villages with high-speed broadband connectivity, by 2019; and will cost a massive Rs 34,000 Crore.
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With a goal to provide high-speed broadband connection to the Rural Areas by connecting all gram-panchayats by the end of March 2019, the Central Government is already done with first phase and is set to launch the second phase of BharatNet project. With an outlay budget of Rs 34,000 crores, the government will connect 150,000 panchayats through 1 million km of additional optical fibre and give bandwidth to telecom players at nearly 75 per cent cheaper rates for broadband and Wi-Fi services in rural areas.
This initiative will not only boost connectivity of rural areas and administrative body, but will also revive the existing optical fibre network of government-owned corporations — BSNL, RailTel and Power Grid — to provide internet connectivity to gram panchayats of India. The project intends to enable the Government of India to provide e-services and e-applications nationally with the help of Telecom Service Providers (TSPs), Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Cable TV operators, etc. Agreements for seven states – Maharashtra, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Jharkhand will be signed by telecom ministry. These states will roll out the service on their own with partial funding from Central Government.
The total project cost of BharatNet is around Rs 45,000 crore, of which Rs 11,200 crore have been used for the first phase. After rural exchange rollout in the country when telecom services started, this is the biggest project involving domestically manufactured products for the entire project. The government expects that the second phase of BharatNet will double up the fibre optics footprint in country and will be capable of generating employment of 10 crore man days during rollout.
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