Digital India: Best State Award goes to Maharashtra for bridging the ‘Digital Divide’ through BharatNet

NewsBharati    09-Jan-2018
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New Delhi, January 9: BharatNet is India’s largest rural broadband network set up to accomplish rhe goal of Digital India. The project aims to provide affordable broadband services to citizens and institutions in rural and remote areas, in partnership with States and the private sector. 

Government has achieved a significant milestone under the BharatNet by completing Phase-1 of the project by connecting over one lakh Gram Panchayats (GP) across the country with high speed optical fibre network as per the declared deadline of 31 Dec 2017.

BharatNet network built under Phase 1 envisages delivery of high-speed broadband services in over 2.5 lakh villages benefitting more than 200 million rural Indians.

 

At a function held here, Union Minister for Communications Manoj Sinha said that the vision and the mission of the country is to connect India to realize the goal of Prime Minister’s Digital India by bridging the digital divide.

Describing the BharatNet as the world’s largest rural broadband project created on the mantra of Create, Collaborate and Conquer, Sinha said that the project will generate massive employment opportunities both direct and indirect in the country in days to come.

He underlined the need to complete the 2nd phase of the BharatNet well before the target of March, 2019 to usher in a rural digital revolution by connecting 2 lakh and 50,000 Gram Panchayats with broadband network

Under Phase 1 of the project, till 31st May 2014 the work had been started in 4,918 GPs and 358 km Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) was pulled and only 59 GPs were made service ready. Till 30th June 2016 work had been started in 84,834 GPs and 1,24,817 km OFC pulled covering 53,557 GPs with 7,229 GPs made Service Ready. As on 31st Dec 2017, 2,54,895 km OFC has been laid covering 1,09,926 GPs out of which 1,01,370 GPs have been made Service Ready.

Minister Manoj Sinha gave away the awards for the Best Performing States, States which covered all the GPs, Best Utilisation of BharatNet, Best performing implementation partners, Best performing equipment supply partners, Best performing OFC supply partners, Best technology partners, and significant individual contributors.

Under the award categories, Maharashtra, UP, MP, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Jharkhand were adjudged as the Best performing States which implemented BharatNet Phase 1.

Kerala, Karnataka and Haryana were the States which covered all the GPs under the Project.

Karnataka bagged the award for Best Utilisation of BharatNet. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and CSC e-Governance Services India Ltd received the awards for the Best performing implementation partners.

While Tejas Networks and Indian Telephone Industries Ltd were honoured with the Best performing equipment supply partners, Finolex Cables, Sterlite Technologies and Vindhya Telelinks Ltd were bestowed with the Best performing Optical Fibre Cable( OFC) supply partners.

Centre for Development of Telematics(CDOT) and National Informatics Centre(NIC) were given the Best technology partners award.