Government Rolls Out BharatNet Phase II Worth INR 34,000 Crores

BharatNet Phase II

The Government has started the BharatNet Project’s Phase II with the overall investment worth INR 34,000 Crores. It aims at providing high-speed broadband facility to all the panchayats by March 2019.

Under this project, the government is going to connect 1.5 Lakh panchayats through 10 Lakh kilometers of additional optical fibre. Besides, the telecom players will be provided bandwidth at nearly 75% cheaper rate for making broadband and wifi services accessible in rural areas.

It’s being reported that telecom operators are likely to provide at least 2 Mbps (megabit per second) speed to the rural households. As per recent updates, Reliance Jio has paid the highest advance subscription fees of INR 13 Crores so as to provide broadband connection to 30,000 village panchayats. Other companies like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, and Idea Cellular have chalked out INR 5 Crores, INR 11 Lakhs, and INR 5 Lakhs, respectively.

Under the project, the telecom ministry is going to sign agreements with 7 states which will be rolling out the broadband plan with partial funding from the central government. These states are Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh. Reportedly, after the completion of Phase II, an amount of around INR 4.5 Lakh Crores can be added to the national gross domestic product.

Notably, every 10% usage of Internet in the country brings up the GDP by 3.3%. As per the government estimates, the second phase of BharatNet will double up the existing optical fibre footprint in the country, generating considerable employment opportunities.

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