JOIN USWorking towards the success of “Digital India”, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday said the Centre will now allow states to execute the National Optical Fibre Network Project (NOFNP).
The finance minister said the Department of Telecom (DoT) would allow willing states to undertake the execution of the projects, mainly the work of laying cables, and reimburse the cost of the execution.
So far, the government has completed cable-laying in just around 5,000 villages. NOFNP aims to provide 100 Mbps high-speed broadband connectivity to 2.5 lakh gram panchayats by December 2016 and the estimated cost of the project is around Rs 30,000 crore.
The government has set a target of rolling out optical fibre network across 50,000 village panchayats by the end of March 2015, one lakh by March 2016 and another one lakh by December 2016.
Jaitley noted that Andhra Pradesh was the first state to have opted for this manner of implementation, while the DoT is likely to take up the matter with remaining states.
The Digital India programme plans to provide WiFi in 2.5 lakh schools, all universities, WiFi hotspots for the public and generate 1.7 crore direct and 8.5 crore indirect jobs. Its pilot projects will start in 2015 and would be implemented country-wide by 2018.