Bharatnet

Intending to democratize information to improve governance and service delivery at the Panchayats through increased efficiency, accountability, transparency, collaboration and greater decentralized decision-making, the Government of India has agreed to create optical fiber cable-based broadband infrastructure for all panchayats. The Government of India through the Department of Telecom had created a strategic plan for providing broadband connectivity to all 250,000 panchayats in India on fiber optic cable with a minimum of 100 Mbps speed. The network shall be used to provide various e-governance services as well as internet facilities to all panchayats. Bharat Broadband Network Limited was created to implement the NOFN project as well as own the entire network. RailTel has been selected as one of the implementing partners to lay the incremental optical fiber cable network to connect the panchayats with respective block headquarters on 100 Mbps broadband speed. RailTel has been allotted certain states comprising 36,000 panchayats which includes the states of Gujarat, Daman & Diu, Dadar & Nagar Haveli, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Nagaland. Under Bharatnet RailTel has laid a total of 27499 KM of optical fiber cable and made 8107 Gram Panchayats service ready so far.