The Centre’s ambitious programme of laying National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) will be implemented in a phased manner with the first one slated to provide broadband connectivity to one lakh gram panchayats by March end 2014.
The Telecom Commission, the highest decision making body of the Department of Telecom, in its recent meeting has approved the proposal to complete the second phase covering one more lakh gram panchayats by March 31, 2015.
In the third phase the rest will be covered by September 30, 2015.
The country has total 2.38 lakh gram panchayats. After the completion of the NOFN project, village panchayats are expected to get broadband connectivity with high speed of up to 100 megabits per second.
The government has formed the Bharat Broadband Network Ltd, special purpose vehicle to implement the scheme with the cost of Rs 20,000 crore. The scheme will be executed by the BSNL, RailTel and Power Grid.
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