As many as six lakh villages will get connected with a high-speed optical fibre-based broadband network within three years, a senior government official said on Monday.
While speaking at CII–GCC Business Summit, Telecom Secretary Neeraj Mittal said that GCCs (Global Capability Center) are currently concentrated in some of the top cities, and the wider connectivity will help them expand their footprint to tier 2 and 3 towns.
“Within three years, we will have all the village panchayats, which are roughly about 2.5 lakhs, plus the villages associated with them, which are roughly about 6 lakhs, will get connected to a high-speed fibre network,” he said.
The government has started rolling out Bharatnet Phase 3 with an outlay of Rs 1.39 lakh crore to connect every gram panchayat and villages with an optical fibre cable (OFC) network.
The project will also connect mobile towers with OFCs that will boost network speed, as the country will look to begin high-speed 6G services in the future.
Mittal said that India has a significantly lower data cost of around 9 cents per GB compared to the global average of USD 2.6, which is a very significant enabler for any GCC.
“The enablers of GCC are very well established in India. We need talent, which is very critical. We need connectivity, which is excellent. The capability to innovate, the rule of law, strong IPR protections, all these things make India a very attractive destination,” he said.
Mittal said India’s median broadband speed was about 138 Mbps.
“We cover 99.6 per cent of the GCC. There are only two districts in the country where there is no 5G. Recently, three companies have now these new licences fully ready to commercialise, which will connect these tier 2, tier 3 cities and people who would work for these GCCs wherever they want to,” he noted.
The government recently freed some spectrum to boost wifi proliferation across the country.
“We are working on freeing up additional spectrum and creating R&D, SMEs and startups in these fields. We hope that with all these initiatives, the GCCs will find the digital infrastructure not to be lacking when they plan for Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities,” Mittal said.
He said that the government is trying to bring in ease of doing business for the cable landing stations through a single window portal. (PTI)
