Under the BharatNet Project, the government has set a target of connecting 2.52 lakh gram panchayats with fast speed broadband service. PM announced to expand the project to all villages.
BharatNet project can be considered as the largest broadband program in the world which will connect the villagers. This is a program started under the Make in India program and in which foreign companies will not have a stake. The ‘Digital India’ initiative of the government will get a boost through the BharatNet project because under this internet facility will be made available from village to village.
What are its benefits?
Under this project, BharatNet is to be implemented in PPP model in 16 states (bundled in nine packages) on funding basis. The total outlay will now be Rs 61,109 crore including an amount of Rs 42,068 crore already sanctioned in 2017. With the expansion of BharatNet, ad-upgrading will include village panchayats and inhabited villages.
Former IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad gave his views on this subject on social media app Ku and told people about this project. In his post he writes – BharatNet is the world’s largest rural broadband connectivity project.
BharatNet aims to connect all 2.5 lakh gram panchayats with high speed internet. So far more than 1.78 lakh Gram Panchayats have been connected with optical fiber and more than 5.49 lakh km of OFC has been laid.
This project is to be done in three phases in which Egg has now reached its third phase
First stage:
To provide broadband connectivity to one lakh Gram Panchayats by laying underground Optic Fiber Cable (OFC) line by December 2017.
Second Step:
To provide connectivity to all Gram Panchayats in the country by optimum use of underground fiber, fiber over power lines, radio and satellite media by March 2019.
Third step:
From 2019 to 2023, a state-of-the-art, future-proof network will use ring topology to extend fiber between districts and blocks.
Let us tell you that this project was launched in October 2011 as National Optical Fiber Network (NOFN), in the year 2015 its name was changed to Bharat Net Project.
