The Govt. plans to set up 500,000 Wi-Fi hotspots and has allocated Rs 10,000 crore under telecom infrastructure.
February 1, 2018
While announcing the budget, Jaitley said that the completion of Phase 1 of Bharat Net is a big step in digital India’s journey and it will now scale it up by providing 500,000 Wi-Fi hotspots in rural areas to provide easy internet access to 50 million Indians. For this, the government has allocated Rs 10,000 crore under telecom infrastructure.
As many as 250,000 villages got optical fibre connectivity under Bharat Net program, wherein 100,000 gram panchayats have been connected with high-speed optic fibre network in the first phase of BharatNet, said Jaitley. The government will work towards connecting another 150,000 villages under Bharat Net initiative.
Bharat Net project is being implemented by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to create network infrastructure for providing 100 Mbps broadband to all gram panchayats (approximately 250,000) in the country in a phased manner by the end of 2018. The Union budget 2017-18 allocated Rs 10,000 crore towards Bharat Net to expedite the project.
