Under BharatNet, more than 17,000-gram panchayats have been made service ready in 2021, while nearly 1.8 lakh gram panchayats have been connected by laying 5,52,514 km optical fibre cable till 1 November 2021.

November 29, 2021

More than 125 Public Data Office Aggregators (PDOAs) and 63 app providers have been registered by the telecom department (DoT) during the year till November 23, under the PM-WANI scheme, with more than 50,000 access points deployed.

“Indigenous 5G testbed project funded by DoT has reached its final stages; Likely to be completed by 31st December 2021,” the department said in its year-end review.

The department has also constituted 6G Technology Innovation Group (TIG) to prepare India’s manufacturing and services ecosystem to capitalise on the 6G opportunity, it added.

The Centre had approved the proposal to proliferate broadband through public WiFi Networks under the framework of Prime Minister’s WiFi Access Network Interface (PM-WANI).

Between 2014 and 2021, the rural tele-density has jumped to 59 percent as of September from 44 percent, while broadband connections have risen from 6.1 crore to 79 crore as of June. Internet connections have risen from 25.15 crore to 83.37 crore as of June, average revenue realisation per subscriber per GB wireless data has reduced to INR 9.8 in June compared with INR 268.97 in December 2014, which has lead to a huge spike–by 22605 percent — in average monthly data consumption per wireless data subscriber which went up to 14 GB in June from 61.66 MB in 2014.

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the telecom sector has risen by 150 percent in the same period, from INR 62,386 crore in 2014 to INR 1,55,353 crore.

The government has approved a massive set of reforms for the sector including opening up of foreign direct investment to 100 percent under the automatic route, besides making changes to rules to ease the liquidity issues being faced by the beleaguered sector.

Also Read: ITI Limited Wins INR 433 crore Order for BharatNet Phase-II from Tamil Nadu Government.

The government has also fixed the timeline for future auctions which will be held at the end of every financial year, and the tenure of the spectrum has been increased from 20 to 30 years has been fixed without any spectrum usage charge.