June 21, 2012

Union Minister of State for IT Sachin Pilot said that all the 250,000 panchayats in the country will be broadband enabled with Optical Fibre Cables (OFCs) in the next two years.

Addressing an IT summit, the minister said the Centre had earmarked a sum of Rs. 20,000 crore for the project. He said the Electronic Services Bill placed before Parliament would transform the realm of digital service providers in the country. “All I want is the states to provide ROW (right of way ) for the OFC program without any charges,” Pilot said.

Earlier this year, the telecom department had accepted the finance ministry’s demand and decided to set up a special purpose vehicle called Bharat Broadband Network (BBNL) to execute this project that will be funded from the Universal Service Obligation Fund.

BBNL is slated to be operational by November next year and will combine the optical fibre cable infrastructure of PSUs including Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, RailTel and Power Grid, in addition to allowing private players to join in at a later date.