BharatNet

August 8, 2023

Cabinet has approved an outlay of ₹1.39 lakh crore for BharatNet, the government’s project for last-mile connectivity across 6.4 lakh villages in the country.
Around 94 lakh villages have been connected at present and rest of the villages are expected to be connected in the next 2.5 years.
BBNL, which is an arm of State-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) now, will be partnering with village level entrepreneurs (VLEs) to provide the connectivity.
- A VLE is a person responsible for managing and operating a Common Service Center (CSC) under the CSC scheme.
- The model to take fibre to the home with the help of a local entrepreneur was finalised after successful completion of a pilot project.
- Around 3,800 entrepreneurs were involved in the pilot project that was carried out for 60,000 villages that provided 3.51 lakh broadband connections.
- Average data consumption per household has been recorded to the tune of 175 gigabyte per month.
The project is being rolled out on 50 per cent revenue share between BBNL and VLE and the monthly broadband plan price starts from ₹399 and goes up to ₹799 with a minimum speed of 30mbps.

BharatNet is one of the biggest rural telecom projects in the world, implemented in a phased manner to all 2.5 lakh gram panchayats (GPs) in the country for last-mile broadband connectivity.
The project was first approved by the Cabinet in October 2011 and is being executed by Bharat Broadband Network (BBNL), as a special purpose vehicle (SPV).
Phase-II was approved in 2017 and funding for the project in both phases has been ₹42,068 crore.
It is funded by Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF).
- USOF is the pool of funds generated by a 5% Universal Service Levy that is charged upon all the telecom fund operators on their Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR).
There are 37 lakh route kilometers (rkm) of optical fibre cable (OFC) laid in the country out of which BBNL has laid 7.7 lakh km OFC.