Bharth Broadband newtwork Project – World’s largest Rural broadband and OFC connectivity Project by Government of India

To put it simply, all citizens of India should have internet connectivity regardless of whether they stay in a metro city or in a village. To attain this the government of India through Bharat Broadband Network Limited has undertaken a behemoth step which was the National Optical Fiber Network.

“National Optical Fibre network is a mission more program of the Government of India headed by Prime MinisterNarendra Modi.  It is a mission to bridge the divide between urban India and rural India. We want to establish National Optical Fibre network connectivity in all the gram panchayats of India in the coming three years and generally India becoming digitally empowered” said Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister, communication and IT.

Fiber optic is a special cable capable of carrying data at practically infinite speeds. Through this fiber optic network 2.5 lakh gram panchayats will be able to embrace the never ending benefits of high-speed broadband internet. The feature which makes this project truly remarkable is it is entirely Made in India. 

Gigabit-capable and the optical fibre, both the passive optical network broadband equipment developed to avail for the power and dust outage problems in the rural areas, are made in India by C-DOT without using any of the foreign equipment. GPON products provided by UTL (United Telecoms Limited) which are developed in India and the technology is natively developed by C-DOT (Centre for Development of Telematics)

In the last decade each and every administration has targeted connecting every village and rural family to high-speed internet. In 2011, under the leadership of the Manmohan Singh UPA government launched this programme under the name “National Optical Fiber Network” (NOFN). This was then changed by the Modi government to “BharatNet” after coming into power. 

This is a middle mile network that is currently lent to service providers for supplying cost-friendly high-speed broadband to rural populations like households, individuals and institutions. This is a flagship project of the government and is known to be the fountain of ‘Digital India’ aiming to lower the digital divide between urban and rural India.

This initiative will cover a predicted 3.61 lakh villages (which includes Gram Panchayats) across Karnataka, Kerala, Rajasthan, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh.

The available BharatNet is connecting all the Gram Panchayats (GPs) of the country by setting of OFC (primarily) within Block and GPs. The extent of BharatNet has now been improved to connect all the populated Villages of the country, approx. 6.43 lakhs (inclusive of GPs).

The government has already reserved ₹19,041 crores in the form of viability gap funding, that means the government will supply funding assistance for any part of the project, if and when required. Over 16 states, over 3.6 lakh villages of the country will be included under the broad BharatNet programme.

Idukki becomes first district in India to get high-speed rural broadband connectivity. With this, the district, which has a large tribal and rural population, has become the country’s first district to have all its village panchayats connected to NOFN, the world’s largest rural broadband connectivity project through optical fibre cable.

“Our country is entering into a new era of digital empowerment. […] Our vision is to transform our country into a knowledge economy,” said Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister of Communication and Information & Technology, who launched the programme in Thiruvananthapuram by receiving the first-ever mobile call from Edamalakkudy, a remote tribal gram panchayat in Idukki.

It is a highly scalable network infrastructure accessible on a non-discriminatory basis, to provide on demand, affordable broadband connectivity of 2 Mbps to 20 Mbps for all households and on demand capacity to all institutions, to realise the vision of Digital India, in partnership with States and the private sector.