BHARAT_NET PROJECT
- TheBharatNet (formerly National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN)) is digital planof the Government of India that aims to digitally connect all of India’s villages and GramPanchayats by broadband Internet connectivity.
- BharatNet is a project of national importance to establish 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.
- The entire project is being funded by Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF), which was set up for improving telecom services in rural and remote areas of the country.
- The objective is to facilitate the delivery of e-governance, e-health, e-education, e-banking, Internet and other services to the rural India.
- The project is a Centre-State collaborative project, with the States contributing free Rights of Way for establishing the Optical Fibre Network.
- The three-phase implementation of the BharatNet project is as follows
- The first phase envisages providing one lakh gram panchayats with broadband connectivity by laying underground optic fibre cable (OFC) lines.
- The second phase will provide connectivity to all 2,50,500 gram panchayats in the country using an optimal mix of underground fiber, fiber over power lines, radio and satellite media.
- In the third phase, state-of-the-art, future-proof network, including fiber between districts and blocks, with ring topology to provide redundancy would be created.