Central Idea

The Cabinet has given its approval for an outlay of ₹1.39 lakh crore for the BharatNet project, aimed at providing last-mile connectivity to around 6.4 lakh villages across India.

About BharatNet Project

Objectives: The project aims to connect 6.4 lakh villages, covering all gram panchayats in the country, with last-mile broadband connectivity through optical fiber.
Implementation: Bharat Broadband Network (BBNL), a special purpose vehicle under Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), is responsible for executing the project.
Tie-up with VLEs: BBNL will collaborate with village level entrepreneurs (VLEs) to provide connectivity, following a successful pilot project in four districts and later expanded to 60,000 villages.
Progress So Far: As of now, around 1.94 lakh villages have been connected, and the rest are expected to be covered in the next 2.5 years.

BharatNet is the world’s largest rural connectivity scheme with an Optical Fibre network.

Gram Panchayat: The scheme aimed to provide 100 Mbps broadband to 2.5 lakh gram panchayats.
Households: The main goal is affordable 2 Mbps to 20 Mbps broadband for all households, especially in rural areas.

Broadband Connections: The pilot project involved 3,800 entrepreneurs providing 3.51 lakh broadband connections to villages.
Data Consumption: Households in connected villages recorded an average data consumption of 175 gigabytes per month.
Pricing and Speed: The project is based on a 50% revenue share between BBNL and VLEs, offering monthly broadband plans priced from ₹399 to ₹799 with a minimum speed of 30mbps.
Optical Fiber Laid: Currently, there are 37 lakh route kilometers (rkm) of optical fiber cable (OFC) laid in India, with BBNL contributing 7.7 lakh rkm OFC to the network.