The Cabinet, in its meeting on Friday late evening, had approved the funds for the project. Giving the latest updates on the ongoing project, 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. “Cabinet has approved ₹1,39,579 crore fund for providing last-mile optical fibre connectivity in all the villages of the country.
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 National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) aims to connect all the 2,50,000 Gram panchayats in the country and provide 100 Mbps connectivity to all gram panchayats (GPs). To achieve this, the existing fibres of PSUs (BSNL, Railtel and Power Grid) were utilised and incremental fibre was laid to connect to Gram Panchayats wherever necessary. Dark fibre network thus created was lit by appropriate technology thus creating sufficient bandwidth at the Gram Panchayats.
Non-discriminatory access to the NOFN was provided to all the service providers like Telecom Service Providers (TSPs), ISPs, Cable TV operators and Content providers to launch various services in rural areas. The NOFN project was funded by the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF).