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Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Digital India plan could get delayed with the Department of Telecom (DoT) set to miss the deadline to connect 50,000 gram panchayats through an optical fibre cable network.
The broadband network in these gram panchayats was supposed to be completed by March 31, but at the current pace of laying cable, only about 15,000 villages may get connected by that date.
The fibre network is being rolled out by BSNL, PowerGrid and RailTel. The DoT had set up a special purpose vehicle, Bharat Broadband Network Ltd (BBNL), to oversee the project’s execution.
Although the speed of laying cable has gone up from 500 km per month to 1,000 km a week, the required speed to achieve the target is 30,000 km a month. “The present rate of progress needs to be scaled up multiple times to meet the target,” BBNL said in a note to the three PSUs entrusted with laying the cable.
Called the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN), it is supposed to connect 2.5 lakh gram panchayats when completed. The ₹20,000-crore project has already been delayed by over two years due to issues around procurement of equipment.
Subsequently, the DoT divided the project into three phases.
The Prime Minister’s Office had asked the department to look at how the process can be speeded up because the network is crucial for a number of Government projects, in particular the Digital India initiative.
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