India’s National Broadband plan to connect 250,000 rural Gram Panchayats in next 2 years is on roll. This has been announced today at a function in New Delhi by Union Minister of Communication & IT Mr. Kapil Sibbal. In all 13 States & 3 Union Territories in India have signed MoU for free Right of Way (RoW) with Central Government & Bharat Broadband Network Ltd- SPV incorporated for execution of project.
This is quite a feat indeed. In India, laying fibre cables along roadside could be daunting task. The last mile connectivity problem, which is often regarded as challenge to overcome, could lead to impasse, if RoW doesn’t work out smoothly. But now states & UTs have joined hands to overcome the RoW issues, the way to rollout fibre to homes, local community centres & gram panchayats is free from hurdles.
As of now 140,000 gram panchayats will be connected by Optical Fibre after signing of MoU. The central government will fund the project through USOF, while states will contribute by signing MoU. Bharat Broadband Network Ltd will commence the work soon for rollout of fibre in the states and expand the presence as on when new states sign the MoU.
The project is believed to provide 100 Mbps bandwidth to all 250,000 gram panchayats across India, leading to proliferation of broadband services to grass root level.
The project will lead to following benefits to states, as quoted:
- Empowerment of rural masses by proliferation of broadband services.
- Various applications for panchayats for planning, management & payments of various central & state government schemes like MNREGA, PDS, Birth/Death Certificates etc can be issued by network.
- Generation of local employment, new revenue generation leading to GDP growth for entire nation.
But as of now, real issue of connecting homes or curbs by optical fibre is prevalent in Indian metros due to high RoW costs. Although Indian metros boast more than 100{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} teledensity, broadband penetration is far lesser than what aimed for at the start of decade. Apart from RoW, high cost of broadband equipments, high broadband tariffs, revised service TAX limit, low throughput of wireless broadband technologies for services like 3G & 3.5G and lack of contents in local languages ailing the widespread adoption of broadband services in India.
We could only hope that more states will join in signing MoU & help in realizing the dream of connecting India.
For more details about the project please visit here.
