Digital India Push: Government Plans To Cover All Gram Panchayats With Wi-Fi By 2019

The Modi government is in final stages of formulating a new telecom policy which is likely to come out by the end of this year. Under the new policy, the centre is planning to make Wi-Fi facility available to all 2.5 lakh panchayats by 2019. These GPs serve over six lakh villages in the country. The whole project is expected to cost around Rs 3,700 crore.

Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan told Press Trust of India that the tender process will start this month.

Once the facilities are in place, rural Indians will be able to access Internet at 1 Gigabyte per second (Gbps) speed. The project is part of BharatNet project under which the government is laying down network of optical fibre cable throughout the country is working on a mission mode to connect all GPs by 2019.

As of 3 September, the government has laid down fibre optic cables in over 1 lakh Gps. The rest 1.5 lakh GPs will be connected in the second phase of the project. Sundararajan told PTI:

The government is looking to increase internet penetration to 70 crore people by 2022 from 45 crore today - an astonishing rise of 25 crore new consumers in just five years at the rate of adding five crore new customers a year.