Advocacy & Government: The rural broadband BharatNet project—an entity set up by the Government of India to connect 2.5 lakh gram panchayats—has 98,569 panchayats that are not yet service ready.
As a result, the deadline to connect all the 2.5 lakh gram panchayats in the country and provide them with 100 Mbps connectivity will be extended from the previous deadline of August 2021.
So far, a total of 1,51,431 gram panchayats are service ready under this project, which is being implemented by the Department of Telecommunication (DoT).
Last year, the Digital Communication Commission (DCC) had given in-principle approval to move to a public-private partnership (PPP) model in order to expedite the project’s implementation. However, this has not been implemented yet.
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