The Narendra Modi cabinet on Friday has approved Rs 1.39 lakh crore for the BharatNet Project, its biggest rural telecom project to enhance the country's rural internet connectivity.
Ministry sources said the project, after multiple delays, is finally on track, and will have significant impact on the implementation of public services in the health and education sectors. One of the main changes the government has made is that it has decided to use village level entrepreneurs (VLE) who it calls Udyamis to take the fibre connections to households on a 50:50 revenue-sharing basis. This is similar to private telecom companies such as Airtel, Vodafone, and Jio, which use local cable operators to provide fixed broadband services to households.
Ministry sources said around 1.94 lakh villages have been connected at present and rest of the villages are expected to be connected in the next 2.5 years. The government is looking at connecting 6,40,000 villages over the next 2.5 years by providing last-mile optical fibre-based connectivity to homes in all the villages of the country.
The role of village-level entrepreneurs will be critical in providing connectivity and maintenance of these connections, officials said, adding that while as of now 3,51,000 fibre connections have been given using the new BharatNet Udyami project, and the project could give jobs to over 2.5 lakh udhyamis.
"We had worked out many models in the past, and we have had our learnings. Now this model will work. For that, we have done a pilot project in four districts and then expanded to 60,000 villages, and we have case studies to prove how this can be a game changer, not just with livelihoods but also with better services. The model now is to take fibre to the home with the help of a local entrepreneur," a top ministry official said. Around 4,000 entrepreneurs were involved in the pilot project that was carried out for 60,000 villages that provided 3.51 lakh broadband connections.
BharatNet is one of the biggest rural telecom projects in the world, implemented in a phased manner to all 2.5 lakh gram panchayats (GPs) in the country for last-mile broadband connectivity. The project, first approved by the Cabinet in 2011, is being executed by Bharat Broadband Network (BBNL), which was merged into BSNL in July last year. In 2017, phase-II was approved. The funding for the project in both phases has been over Rs 42,068 crore.
According to ministry officials, average data consumption per household has been recorded to the tune of 175 GB per month, and the monthly home broadband plan price starts from Rs 399, giving 30 Mbps unlimited data, combined with OTT offerings and goes up to Rs 799 with a minimum speed of 30mbps.
The project is being rolled out on 50 per cent revenue share between BBNL and VLE and there are 37 lakh route kilometres (rkm) of optical fibre cable (OFC) laid in the country, out of which BBNL has laid 7.7 lakh rkm OFC, the official added.
In the last decade, the speed of BharatNet, seen as India's flagship rural internet connectivity scheme, has slowed down due to many factors. In August 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had expanded the scope of the project when he announced that BharatNet would aim to connect all 6 lakh villages, instead of just the 2.5 lakh gram panchayats. In 2021, the cabinet allocated another Rs 19,041 crore to implement the last-mile connectivity under a PPP model, but that did not find many takers.
Officials said many meetings have been held since then to modernise the BharatNet project, and its execution strategy has been changed, and Village Level Entrepreneurs have been roped in. Officials explained that the cost for taking the infrastructure to the home will be borne by the government, while the rural entrepreneurs will only need to be involved in maintenance and operations of home connections but also look into complaints from people, and health of the fibre. They also said BharatNet has an advantage over competitors because these private operators are not present in rural areas.
