The Indian government on Wednesday said that under the BharatNet project for high speed broadband, a total of 5,67,941 km optical fibre cable (OFC) has been laid as on February 2022.

It added that a  total of 1,72,361 gram panchayats (GPs) or village administrations —1,68,010 GPs on OFC and 4,351 GPs on satellite — have been made service-ready in the country. As on December 2021, a total of Rs. 27,582.7 crore has been disbursed/utilised under the BharatNet project.

The scope of BharatNet was recently extended by the federal government to all inhabited villages beyond village administrations in the country in an ambitious initiative that seeks to bring the benefits of technology to a larger section of the populace.

This information was given by the junior Communications Minister Devusinh Chauhan in a written reply to a question from a fellow parliamentarian in the Lok Sabha (Lower House) on Wednesday.

According to the Minister, the BharatNet project is being implemented in a phased manner to provide broadband connectivity to all the gram panchayats in the country through an optimal mix of media like the OFC, radio and satellite.

Further, for real-time monitoring of the project, a mobile app has been developed that is a GIS based monitoring system for capturing and monitoring data at field level with smartphones. Maintenance works (O&M of incremental OFC network, etc.) is being presently carried out by another government organisationin about 120,000 GPs of the BharatNet Phase-I.

The infrastructure created under BharatNet project is a national asset, accessible on a non- discriminatory basis to the service providers, and the same can be utilized for provisioning of broadband and Internet services through Wi-Fi Hotspots, fibre to the home (FTTH) connections, leased lines, dark fibre, backhaul to mobile towers, etc.

As of  February 2022, Wi-Fi hotspots have been installed in 1,04,288 GPs; 2,13,834 FTTH broadband connections are being provided; 36,333 km Dark Fibre has been leased and 4,038 Gbps bandwidth has been leased using BharatNet network.

With the above steps taken for maintenance and utilization of the BharatNet network, there has been an upward trend in the revenue collection in the country, the Communications Minister added.