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Finance Minister proposes allocation of Rs 8,175 crore to complete phase-II of BharatNet Project.

Details

• To further promote the Centre’s BharatNet project for providing broadband services in 2.5 lakh gram panchayats of the country, the finance ministry has proposed an allocation of Rs 8,175 crore, which will be used towards completing the second phase of the programme under which 1.5 lakh gram panchayats will be covered.
• In total, the Budget has allotted Rs 14,500 crore for 2018-19 to augment telecom infrastructure projects, which includes Rs 4,500 crore for an alternate communication network for defence services.
• The government also proposed to set up 5 lakh wifi hotspots which will provide broadband access to 5 crore rural citizens.
• The Rs 10,000-crore outlay includes Rs 524 crore for setting up additional 156 towers in naxal-affected area and upgradation of bandwidth at 302 VSAT sites from existing 512 Kbps to 1 Mbps. The finance ministry allocation of Rs 450 crore for 25,000 WiFi hotspots in rural areas, Rs 443.29 crore for providing optical fibre cable based connectivity in Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep Islands and Rs 400 crore to provide 2,817 mobile towers in 4,119 identified uncovered villages of the North East region.
• The minister also announced that the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) will set up a test bed for 5th generation mobile telephony technology anchored by Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai. As per budget document, the FM has proposed to allocate Rs 134.48 crore for setting up of the test bed.
• In addition, the finance ministry said in the Budget that the Centre expects around 58 per cent increase in revenue at Rs 48,661.42 crore from the telecom sector in 2018-19, compared with the revised revenue estimate of Rs 30,736 crore for the ongoing financial year. The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) mainly earns revenue in form of licence fee and spectrum usage charges from telecom operators, apart from auction of airwaves.

About BharatNet Project

• The BharatNet project aims to connect 2.5 lakh gram panchayats by March 2019.
• The task of connecting 1 lakh gram panchayats with high speed optic fibre network has been completed under Phase-I of Bharat Net Program.
• This has enabled broadband access to cove rural Indians in about 2.5 lakh villages.
• Government has discounted the bulk BharatNet bandwidth rates to the commercial telecom operators by 75% to enable them to offer the highly-discounted, affordable, competitive and commercially-viable BharatNet-enabled wireless cellular 4G broadband deals to the rural customers.
• The ₹450,000 million (US$7.1 billion or €5.7 billion) union government share of funding will come from the "Universal Services Obligation Fund" of Department of Telecommunications.
• It will be rolled out with the additional funding by state governments to connect all gram panchayats in India. 
• The BharatNet is, world's largest rural broadband connectivity program. It is built 100% under Make in India economy-booster employment-generation initiative with no involvement of foreign companies.

Source

Indian Express, Vikaspedia