BharatNet broadband project enters in second phase. Know more about it.

BharatNet, a project to provide all village panchayats with high speed broadband services has entered in second phase with sanction of Rs 31,000 crore and an outlay to provide all village panchayats with high speed broadband internet. Telecom Minister, along with Law and IT Minister, Human Resource Development Minister and Bihar Deputy Chief Minister announced commencement of the phase.

The project, which aims to connect all villages in India with high speed internet to achieve complete digital India, is also expected to bring a major boost in IT and telecom sector. Thus, millions of employment opportunities will generate in developing infrastructure and maintain the services.

Almost all telecom service provides have applied to provide services in BharatNet. Reliance Jio paid the highest advance subscription fee of Rs 13 crore to provide broadband services at 30,000 village panchayats, with a commitment to buy bandwidth in every panchayat from the government as it expands the project. Bharti Airtel shelled out Rs 5 crore for bandwidth buy to cover 30,500 village panchayats, Vodafone Rs 11 lakh and Idea Cellular Rs 5 lakh.

Broadband services have already started in more than 48,000 villages and over 75,000 villages are ready for the services. The first phase of BharatNet will be completed by the end of the year and under the second phase, the government will lay down optical fibre network across 1.5 lakh village panchayats.

The government has slashed bandwidth price under the BharatNet project by 75 per cent which will help telecom operators provide services at affordable rates.

The project, then called the National Optical Fibre Network, was approved by the previous government in October 2011. However, only a few hundred kilometres out of 3 lakh kilometres of optical fibre were laid across the country. The current government approved changes in the project to expedite rollout and renamed it as BharatNet.

The government expects to complete the entire BharatNet project, entailing an investment of Rs 42,000 crore in both the phases, by March 2019. The pace which the project is getting progressed with, it is expected the mission will have achieved by 2019 and motive to digitalized the country will also have achieved.