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BharatNet, also known as Bharat Broadband Network Limited, is a central public sector undertaking, set up by the
Department of Telecommunications The Department of Telecommunications, abbreviated to DoT, is a Ministry (government department), department of the Ministry of Communications (India), Ministry of Communications of the executive branch of the Government of India. History Telecom ...
, a department under
Ministry of Communications A Communications Ministry or Department of Communications is a ministry or other government agency charged with communication. Communications responsibilities includes regulating telecommunications, postal services, broadcasting and print media. T ...
of the
Government of India The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, c ...
for the establishment, management, and operation of the National Optical Fibre Network to provide a minimum of 100 
Mbit/s In telecommunications, data-transfer rate is the average number of bits (bitrate), characters or symbols (baudrate), or data blocks per unit time passing through a communication link in a data-transmission system. Common data rate units are multi ...
broadband In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...
connectivity to all 250,000-
gram panchayat Gram Panchayat () is a basic village-governing institute in Indian villages. It is a democratic structure at the grass-roots level in India. It is a political institute, acting as cabinet of the village. The Gram Sabha work as the general bod ...
s in the country, covering nearly 625,000 villages, by improving the middle layer of nation-wide broadband internet in India to achieve the goal of
Digital India Digital India is a campaign launched by the Government of India in order to ensure that the Government's services are made available to citizens electronically by improved online infrastructure and by increasing Internet connectivity or making ...
."Only 'Made in India' equipment for BharatNet: Govt."
The Hindu ''The Hindu'' is an Indian English-language daily newspaper owned by The Hindu Group, headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. It began as a weekly in 1878 and became a daily in 1889. It is one of the Indian newspapers of record and the secon ...
, 12 November 2017.
"Govt to launch second phase of BharatNet, to connect 1.5 lakh panchayats with internet."
The News Minute ''The News Minute'' is an Indian digital news platform based in Bangalore, Karnataka. It was founded by Dhanya Rajendran, Chitra Subramaniam and Vignesh Vellore in 2014. Apart from Karnataka, it also has bureaus in the states of Telangana, And ...
, 13 November 2017.
BharatNet Phase-I, connecting 100,000 village councils covering 300,000 villages, was completed by December 2017. BharatNet Phase-II will be completed by 31 March 2023 to connect the remaining 150,000 village councils covering 325,000 villages in 16 states (July 2021 update). The last mile connectivity, with a total of 700,000 Wi-Fi hotspots to cover all 625,000 villages of India by adding 2 to 5 Wi-Fi hotspots per gram panchayat and a minimum of one Wi-Fi hotspot per village, have been created by connecting high-speed 4G base tower stations of commercial telecom operators to BharatNet, whereby commercially non-viable Wi-Fi hotspots will be subsidized by the union government grant of to sustain the operation. BharatNet is the world's largest rural broadband connectivity program,BharatNet FAQ
/ref> which is built under the
Make in India Make in India is an initiative by the Government of India to create and encourage companies to develop, manufacture and assemble products made in India and incentivize dedicated investments into manufacturing. The policy approach was to creat ...
initiative with no involvement of foreign companies. It is both an enabler and a beneficiary of other key government schemes, such as Digital India, Make in India, the
National e-Governance Plan The National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) is an initiative of the Government of India to make all government services available to the citizens of India via electronic media. NeGP was formulated by the Department of Electronics and Information Techno ...
, UMANG,
Bharatmala The Bharatmala Pariyojna ( 'India garland project') is an ecosystem of road development which includes development of tunnels, bridges, elevated corridors, flyovers, overpass, interchanges, bypasses, ring roads etc. to provide shortest, jam f ...
, Sagarmala, Parvatmala, the dedicated freight corridors,
industrial corridor An industrial corridor is a package of infrastructure spending allocated to a specific geographical area, with the intent to stimulate industrial development. An industrial corridor aims to create an area with a cluster of manufacturing or another ...
s, and UDAN-RCS.


History


Origin and slow pace of implementation (2011)

On 25 October 2011, the Government of India approved the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) initiative, later renamed as BharatNet, to connect all 250,000 gram panchayats in the country covering nearly 625,000 villages, by utilizing the existing optical fibre network and extending it to the gram panchayats. To achieve this, Bharat Broadband Network was incorporated as a Special Purpose Vehicle(SPV) on 25 February 2012 under Companies Act of 1956. Between 2011 and 2014, project did not take off as planned, and only 350 km of optical fibre, out of 300,000 km optical fibre network needed for the Phase-I, was laid. Between 2014 and 2017, the original Phase-I target of laying 300,000 km of optical fibre was completed under the new BJP government.


Implementation boost in 2014

The BharatNet project picked up pace under the Digital India initiative after Prime Minister
Narendra Modi Narendra Damodardas Modi (; born 17 September 1950) is an Indian politician serving as the 14th and current Prime Minister of India since 2014. Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and is the Member of Parliament from ...
came to power, he renamed the project as the "BharatNet", made several changes to expedite the project, significantly enhanced the BharatNet funding to several billion dollars under the
Digital India Digital India is a campaign launched by the Government of India in order to ensure that the Government's services are made available to citizens electronically by improved online infrastructure and by increasing Internet connectivity or making ...
, set ambitious time-bound implementations deadlines, appointed government public sector units (BSNL, RailTel, and PowerGrid Corp) for the swift implementation and monitoring, and to bypass the
right of way Right of way is the legal right, established by grant from a landowner or long usage (i.e. by prescription), to pass along a specific route through property belonging to another. A similar ''right of access'' also exists on land held by a gov ...
issues for laying the optical fibre cable network the existing government-owned roads, rail lines, and power lines were used. Bangalore based United Telecoms Limited won the bid, being almost 80% lower than the second-lowest bidder ITI Limited followed by Tejas
STL
etc. BharatNet collaborated with other government entities such as
C-DOT The Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) is an Indian Government owned telecommunications technology development centre. It was established in 1984 with initial mandate of designing and developing digital exchanges. C-DOT has expanded to ...
,
Telecommunications Consultants India Limited Telecommunications Consultants India Limited (TCIL) is a central public sector undertaking. It is under the ownership of the Department of Telecommunications , Ministry of Communications, Government of India. It was set up in 1978 to give con ...
and
National Informatics Centre The National Informatics Centre (NIC) is an Indian government department under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). The NIC provides infrastructure, IT Consultancy, IT Services including but not limited to architecti ...
for the design and rollout plan of BharatNet NOFN Project. BharatNet assigned the execution work of network roll out to several other Government of India Public Sector Units, namely BSNL,
RailTel RailTel Corporation of India Ltd. is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Indian Railways, Ministry of Railways, Government of India. It provides broadband and VPN services. RailTel was formed in September 2000 with the objective of creating a nat ...
and Power Grid Corporation of India. Project was rolled out as a collaboration between the Union Government (to provide broadband connectivity at sub-district Block-level), state governments (optical fibre to gram panchayat level) and private sector companies (Wi-Fi hotspots in each village and connections to the individual homes). Union government total share is , the rest will be funded by the respective state governments.


Implementation partners

There are 36
states and union territories of India India is a federal union comprising 28 states and 8 union territories, with a total of 36 entities. The states and union territories are further subdivided into districts and smaller administrative divisions. History Pre-indepen ...
, including 28 states and 9 UTs. BSNL was awarded work for 18 of these, RailTel received work in 8 and Power Grid Corporation of India in 5. BSNL was awarded work for 18+ states and UTs, namely
Andaman and Nicobar Islands The Andaman and Nicobar Islands is a union territory of India consisting of 572 islands, of which 37 are inhabited, at the junction of the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. The territory is about north of Aceh in Indonesia and separated f ...
,
Assam Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...
,
Bihar Bihar (; ) is a state in eastern India. It is the 2nd largest state by population in 2019, 12th largest by area of , and 14th largest by GDP in 2021. Bihar borders Uttar Pradesh to its west, Nepal to the north, the northern part of West Be ...
,
Chandigarh Chandigarh () is a planned city in India. Chandigarh is bordered by the state of Punjab to the west and the south, and by the state of Haryana to the east. It constitutes the bulk of the Chandigarh Capital Region or Greater Chandigarh, which al ...
,
Chhattisgarh Chhattisgarh (, ) is a landlocked state in Central India. It is the ninth largest state by area, and with a population of roughly 30 million, the seventeenth most populous. It borders seven states – Uttar Pradesh to the north, Madhya Prade ...
,
Haryana Haryana (; ) is an Indian state located in the northern part of the country. It was carved out of the former state of East Punjab on 1 Nov 1966 on a linguistic basis. It is ranked 21st in terms of area, with less than 1.4% () of India's land ar ...
, Jammu and Kashmir,
Karnataka Karnataka (; ISO: , , also known as Karunāḍu) is a state in the southwestern region of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act. Originally known as Mysore State , it was renamed ''Karnat ...
,
Kerala Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South ...
,
Lakshadweep Lakshadweep (), also known as Laccadives (), is a union territory of India. It is an archipelago of 36 islands in the Arabian sea, located off the Malabar Coast. The name ''Lakshadweep'' means "one lakh islands" in Sanskrit, though the Lac ...
,
Madhya Pradesh Madhya Pradesh (, ; meaning 'central province') is a state in central India. Its capital is Bhopal, and the largest city is Indore, with Jabalpur, Ujjain, Gwalior, Sagar, and Rewa being the other major cities. Madhya Pradesh is the seco ...
,
Maharashtra Maharashtra (; , abbr. MH or Maha) is a states and union territories of India, state in the western India, western peninsular region of India occupying a substantial portion of the Deccan Plateau. Maharashtra is the List of states and union te ...
,
Punjab Punjab (; Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising ...
,
Rajasthan Rajasthan (; lit. 'Land of Kings') is a state in northern India. It covers or 10.4 per cent of India's total geographical area. It is the largest Indian state by area and the seventh largest by population. It is on India's northwestern si ...
,
Sikkim Sikkim (; ) is a state in Northeastern India. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China in the north and northeast, Bhutan in the east, Province No. 1 of Nepal in the west and West Bengal in the south. Sikkim is also close to the Siligur ...
,
Uttar Pradesh Uttar Pradesh (; , 'Northern Province') is a state in northern India. With over 200 million inhabitants, it is the most populated state in India as well as the most populous country subdivision in the world. It was established in 1950 ...
(divided into two projects, UP East and UP West),
Uttarakhand Uttarakhand ( , or ; , ), also known as Uttaranchal ( ; the official name until 2007), is a state in the northern part of India. It is often referred to as the "Devbhumi" (literally 'Land of the Gods') due to its religious significance and ...
and
West Bengal West Bengal (, Bengali: ''Poshchim Bongo'', , abbr. WB) is a state in the eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabitants within an area of . West Bengal is the fourt ...
. RailTel was awarded work for 8+ states and UTs, namely
Arunachal Pradesh Arunachal Pradesh (, ) is a state in Northeastern India. It was formed from the erstwhile North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) region, and became a state on 20 February 1987. It borders the states of Assam and Nagaland to the south. It shares int ...
,
Gujarat Gujarat (, ) is a state along the western coast of India. Its coastline of about is the longest in the country, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula. Gujarat is the fifth-largest Indian state by area, covering some ; and the ninth ...
,
Nagaland Nagaland () is a landlocked state in the northeastern region of India. It is bordered by the Indian states of Arunachal Pradesh to the north, Assam to the west, Manipur to the south and the Sagaing Region of Myanmar to the east. Its capital cit ...
,
Manipur Manipur () ( mni, Kangleipak) is a state in Northeast India, with the city of Imphal as its capital. It is bounded by the Indian states of Nagaland to the north, Mizoram to the south and Assam to the west. It also borders two regions of Myanm ...
,
Mizoram Mizoram () is a state in Northeast India, with Aizawl as its seat of government and capital city. The name of the state is derived from "Mizo people, Mizo", the endonym, self-described name of the native inhabitants, and "Ram", which in the Mizo ...
,
Meghalaya Meghalaya (, or , meaning "abode of clouds"; from Sanskrit , "cloud" + , "abode") is a states and union territories of India, state in northeastern India. Meghalaya was formed on 21 January 1972 by carving out two districts from the state of As ...
,
Puducherry Puducherry or Pondicherry may refer to: * Puducherry (union territory), a union territory of India ** Pondicherry, capital of the union territory of Puducherry ** Puducherry district, a district of the union territory of Puducherry ** Puducherry t ...
and
Tripura Tripura (, Bengali: ) is a state in Northeast India. The third-smallest state in the country, it covers ; and the seventh-least populous state with a population of 36.71 lakh ( 3.67 million). It is bordered by Assam and Mizoram to the east a ...
. Power Grid Corporation of India was awarded work for 5 states, namely
Andhra Pradesh Andhra Pradesh (, abbr. AP) is a state in the south-eastern coastal region of India. It is the seventh-largest state by area covering an area of and tenth-most populous state with 49,386,799 inhabitants. It is bordered by Telangana to the ...
,
Himachal Pradesh Himachal Pradesh (; ; "Snow-laden Mountain Province") is a state in the northern part of India. Situated in the Western Himalayas, it is one of the thirteen mountain states and is characterized by an extreme landscape featuring several peaks ...
,
Jharkhand Jharkhand (; ; ) is a state in eastern India. The state shares its border with the states of West Bengal to the east, Chhattisgarh to the west, Uttar Pradesh to the northwest, Bihar to the north and Odisha to the south. It has an area of . It ...
,
Odisha Odisha (English: , ), formerly Orissa ( the official name until 2011), is an Indian state located in Eastern India. It is the 8th largest state by area, and the 11th largest by population. The state has the third largest population of ...
and
Telangana Telangana (; , ) is a States and union territories of India, state in India situated on the south-central stretch of the Indian subcontinent, Indian peninsula on the high Deccan Plateau. It is the List of states and union territories of India b ...
.
Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...
is included with Phase-I BSNL work for Haryana.
Goa Goa () is a state on the southwestern coast of India within the Konkan region, geographically separated from the Deccan highlands by the Western Ghats. It is located between the Indian states of Maharashtra to the north and Karnataka to the ...
is also included with Phase-I BSNL work for Maharastra.
Dadra and Nagar Haveli Dadra and Nagar Haveli is a district of the union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu in western India. It is composed of two separate geographical entities: Nagar Haveli, wedged in between Maharashtra and Gujarat states to ...
and
Daman and Diu Daman and Diu (; ) was a former union territory in northwestern India. With an area of , it was the smallest administrative subdivision of India on the mainland. The territory comprised two districts, Damaon and Dio island, geographically sep ...
are included with Phase-II work for RailTel.
Tripura Tripura (, Bengali: ) is a state in Northeast India. The third-smallest state in the country, it covers ; and the seventh-least populous state with a population of 36.71 lakh ( 3.67 million). It is bordered by Assam and Mizoram to the east a ...
is likely included with Phase-II RailTel work for the
Northeast India , native_name_lang = mni , settlement_type = , image_skyline = , image_alt = , image_caption = , motto = , image_map = Northeast india.png , ...
.


Project features


Benefits

BharatNet will provide more employment opportunities, improved service delivery (online e-gram panchayat services, e-governance, e-education, e-health, e-medicine, e-grievances, e-agriculture, e-citizen, etc.), and an impetus to the
Make in India Make in India is an initiative by the Government of India to create and encourage companies to develop, manufacture and assemble products made in India and incentivize dedicated investments into manufacturing. The policy approach was to creat ...
,
Digital India Digital India is a campaign launched by the Government of India in order to ensure that the Government's services are made available to citizens electronically by improved online infrastructure and by increasing Internet connectivity or making ...
and
Startup India Startup India is an initiative of the Government of India. The campaign was first announced by Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi during his speech on 15 August 2015. The action plan of this initiative is focussing on three areas: # Simplif ...
initiatives. According to
Morgan Stanley Morgan Stanley is an American multinational investment management and financial services company headquartered at 1585 Broadway in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. With offices in more than 41 countries and more than 75,000 employees, the fir ...
's research, of India's 33% internet penetration in November 2017 only 15% and 2% of total internet users use online shopping and retail shopping respectively, estimated to go up to 78% penetration, 62% online shoppers and 15% online retail shopper respectively by 2027."."
Economic Times, 17 November 2017.
As per study by th
ICRIER
every 10% increase in the usage of
internet in India Internet in India began in 1986 and was available only to the educational and research community. General public access to the internet began on 15 August 1995, and as of July 2022 there are 833 million active internet users that comprise 59.28% ...
will add leading to a 3.3% increase in GDP of India, a number that will go up after the completion of Phase-II in March 2019. By the end of BharatNet Phase-II in March 2019, the total current fibre optical network will grow by 100% to 10 million kilometres. This 100% increment in the fibre optic network would result in several hundred percent increment in the internet usage when in addition to 625,000 villages (each with minimum 100 Mbit/s), 2,500,000 government institutions and 5,000,000 households will also be connected to the BharatNet broadband by the time it is completed."422.2M Internet connections in India; Maharashtra (excluding Mumbai) had highest broadband connections."MediaNama.Com
July 2017.
To put the potential gains things in perspective, during the early phase of the project in 2018, India had a population of 1.3 billion people (1.36 billion in 2021), 1.23 billion
Aadhaar Aadhaar ( hi, आधार, ādhār, lit=base, foundation, bn, আধার) is a 12-digit unique identity number that can be obtained voluntarily by the citizens of India and resident foreign nationals who have spent over 182 days in twelve ...
digital biometric identities, 1.21 billion mobile phones, 446 million smartphones, 560 million internet users (800 million in 2021), 35% internet penetration (57% in 2021), and 51% growth in e-commerce.Govt will soon make Aadhaar-driving licence linking mandatory: Ravi Shankar Prasad
Indian Express, 7 Jan 2019.
BharatNet has stated goal of 100 Mbit/s internet speed, and in Q1 2020 India ranked 3rd with 15.34 Mbit/s wireless/mobile internet speed and 70th with 55.76 Mbit/s fixed broadband speed (also see countries by Internet connection speed). BharatNet will expedite broadband and smartphone penetration and speed and their multiplier impact on the economy.


Funding

The government has discounted the bulk BharatNet bandwidth rates to the commercial telecom operators by 76% to enable them to offer the highly discounted, affordable, competitive, and commercially viable BharatNet-enabled wireless cellular 4G broadband deals to the rural customers. The union government share of funding will come from the Universal Services Obligation Fund of the Department of Telecommunications. It will be rolled out with the additional funding by state governments to connect all gram panchayats in India.


Make in India

Both the
optical fibre An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a means to ...
and the Gigabit-capable
passive optical network A passive optical network (PON) is a fiber-optic telecommunications technology for delivering broadband network access to end-customers. Its architecture implements a point-to-multipoint topology in which a single optical fiber serves multiple en ...
broadband In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...
equipment, made to account for the dust and power outage issues in the rural areas, are made in India by
C-DOT The Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) is an Indian Government owned telecommunications technology development centre. It was established in 1984 with initial mandate of designing and developing digital exchanges. C-DOT has expanded to ...
with no involvement of foreign companies. GPON products (see below) supplied by United Telecoms Limited (UTL) which are manufactured in India and the technology is indigenously developed by
Centre for Development of Telematics The Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) is an Indian Government owned telecommunications technology development centre. It was established in 1984 with initial mandate of designing and developing digital exchanges. C-DOT has expanded to ...
(C-DOT).


Bharat Net as middle layer

BharatNet is the "internet" layer in the "Internet Key Layers" diagram and it is designed to provide first four layers of the
OSI model The Open Systems Interconnection model (OSI model) is a conceptual model that 'provides a common basis for the coordination of SOstandards development for the purpose of systems interconnection'. In the OSI reference model, the communications ...
, namely the physical layer, data link layer, network layer, and transport layer. The components of the BharatNet architecture in th
concept diagram
are as follows.


National level connectivity: GPON technology

The ''"Gigabit
passive optical network A passive optical network (PON) is a fiber-optic telecommunications technology for delivering broadband network access to end-customers. Its architecture implements a point-to-multipoint topology in which a single optical fiber serves multiple en ...
:'' (GPON)technology at the national level:
Passive optical network A passive optical network (PON) is a fiber-optic telecommunications technology for delivering broadband network access to end-customers. Its architecture implements a point-to-multipoint topology in which a single optical fiber serves multiple en ...
network architecture Network architecture is the design of a computer network. It is a framework for the specification of a network's physical components and their functional organization and configuration, its operational principles and procedures, as well as commun ...
brings fibre cabling and digital signals to the homes, using the
point-to-multipoint communication In telecommunications, point-to-multipoint communication (P2MP, PTMP or PMP) is communication which is accomplished via a distinct type of one-to-many connection, providing multiple paths from a single location to multiple locations. Point-to ...
design that enables a single optical fibre to serve multiple premises. Design based on the
ITU The International Telecommunication Union is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for many matters related to information and communication technologies. It was established on 17 May 1865 as the International Telegraph Unio ...
standard
G.984 G.984, commonly known as GPON (gigabit-capable passive optical network), is a standard for passive optical networks (PON) published by the ITU-T. It is commonly used to implement the outermost link to the customer (last kilometre or last mile) ...
and TEC spec GR no.PON-01/02 Apr 2008 provides higher bandwidth and efficiency due to the bigger variable-length
network packet In telecommunications and computer networking, a network packet is a formatted unit of data carried by a packet-switched network. A packet consists of control information and user data; the latter is also known as the ''payload''. Control informa ...
s, allowing more efficient packaging of user traffic with segmented frame, offering higher
quality of service Quality of service (QoS) is the description or measurement of the overall performance of a service, such as a telephony or computer network, or a cloud computing service, particularly the performance seen by the users of the network. To quantitat ...
(QoS) and low latency for delay-sensitive voice and video traffic. A GPON brings fibre cabling and signals to the home using a point-to-multipoint scheme that enables a single optical fibre to serve multiple premises. Encryption maintains data security in this shared environment. The architecture uses passive (unpowered) optical splitters, reducing the cost of equipment compared to point-to-point architectures.http://www.bbnl.nic.in/content/page/technology.php The GPON standard differs from other passive optical network standards in that it achieves higher bandwidth and higher efficiency using larger, variable-length packets. GPON offers efficient packaging of user traffic, with frame segmentation allowing higher
quality of service Quality of service (QoS) is the description or measurement of the overall performance of a service, such as a telephony or computer network, or a cloud computing service, particularly the performance seen by the users of the network. To quantitat ...
(QoS) for delay-sensitive voice and video communications traffic. The main components of GPON technology are
OLT Olt or OLT may refer to: People: * Károly Olt (1904–1985), Hungarian politician * Mike Olt (born 1988), American baseball player Places: * Olt County, a county (județ) of Romania * Olt (river), a river in Romania ** Olt Defile, a defile that ...
, ONT/ ONU, Fiber-optic splitter and Optical Fibre Cables. The
ITU The International Telecommunication Union is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for many matters related to information and communication technologies. It was established on 17 May 1865 as the International Telegraph Unio ...
standard G-984 series as well as TEC spec GR no.PON-01/02 Apr 2008 define the GPON technology. C-DOT has also inked technology transfer pacts with six Indian vendors which include
Indian Telephone Industries Limited ITI Limited, earlier known as Indian Telephone Industries Limited, is a central public sector undertaking in India. It is under the ownership of Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Communications , Government of India. It was founded ...
(ITI Ltd), Tejas Networks, VMC, Sai Systems, UTL and SM Creative to manufacture the gear on winning the contracts. UTL emerged as the competitive bid winner and obtained the GPON supply contract for a value of approximately Rs 1000 Cr. The companies like ITI Ltd, Tejas Networks, Sterlite,
ZTE ZTE Corporation is a Chinese partially state-owned technology company that specializes in telecommunication. Founded in 1985, ZTE is listed on both the Hong Kong and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges. ZTE's core business is wireless, exchange, opt ...
and
Larsen & Toubro Larsen & Toubro Ltd, commonly known as L&T, is an Indian multinational conglomerate company, with business interests in engineering, construction, manufacturing, technology, information technology and financial services, headquartered in Mumba ...
lost this deal to UTL. The rollout of GPON is being carried out and it is expected that by March 2015 around 60000 villages will be connected.


Community Development Block level connectivity

#
Optical line terminal {{unreferenced, date=April 2016 An optical line termination (OLT), also called an optical line terminal, is a device which serves as the service provider endpoint of a passive optical network. It provides two main functions: # to perform conversio ...
at subdistrict block level:
OLT device installed at each
Block (district subdivision) A block is an administrative division of some South Asian countries. Bhutan In Bhutan, a block is called a gewog. It is essentially for oil a group of villages. Gewogs are official administrative units of Bhutan. The country is composed of ...
will serve as the BharatNet's national-level service provider's endpoint of a passive optical network and perform a conversion between the electrical signals used by the service provider's equipment and the fibre optic signals used by the passive optical network.


Gram panchayat level level connectivity

#
Optical fibre cable A fiber-optic cable, also known as an optical-fiber cable, is an assembly similar to an electrical cable, but containing one or more optical fibers that are used to carry light. The optical fiber elements are typically individually coated with ...
to each gram panchayat:
The connectivity from OLT at Subdistrict-Block-level to each
gram panchayat Gram Panchayat () is a basic village-governing institute in Indian villages. It is a democratic structure at the grass-roots level in India. It is a political institute, acting as cabinet of the village. The Gram Sabha work as the general bod ...
is provided by the
optical fibre An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a means to ...
point of presence A point of presence (PoP) is an artificial demarcation point or network interface point between communicating entities. A common example is an ISP point of presence, the local access point that allows users to connect to the Internet with their ...
. Optical fibre technology provides high bandwidth, low maintenance, and a scalable network but requires time to roll out the physical network.
End-to-end encryption End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a system of communication where only the communicating users can read the messages. In principle, it prevents potential eavesdroppers – including telecom providers, Internet providers, malicious actors, and even ...
is used to ensure data security in this shared network. #
Beam splitter A beam splitter or ''beamsplitter'' is an optical device that splits a beam of light into a transmitted and a reflected beam. It is a crucial part of many optical experimental and measurement systems, such as interferometers, also finding wide ...
s and combiners:
The beam splitter (downstream; upstream is called the "combiner") is an optical device that splits a beam of light in two, thus providing the ability to connect multiple gram panchayats along the way to the single optical fibre cable. Use of the "passive" (unpowered) fibre optic splitter reduces the operational cost of equipment compared to the point-to-point technology (Wi-Fi, requires power). #
Optical network terminal upTwo simple NIDs, carrying six lines each, on the outside of a building upA German copper phone line termination box called '' Abschlusspunkt LinienTechnik'' (APL, " Demarcation point") In telecommunications, a network interface device (NID; ...
s at gram panchayat level:
ONT, also called ONU, are the devices that transmit signals to the customer premises (each gram panchayat in this case) using fibre optic technology in a fibre-to-the-premises system. BharatNet will sign contracts with
internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...
(ISP) telecom companies to set up Wi-Fi hotspots (connected to fibre optic network via ONT), and also to provide optical fibre connections to the individual houses or institutes needing relatively much higher speed dedicated connection. As
throughput Network throughput (or just throughput, when in context) refers to the rate of message delivery over a communication channel, such as Ethernet or packet radio, in a communication network. The data that these messages contain may be delivered ov ...
requirements of a village, institute, or house increase, they will require dedicated fibre optical connections instead of village-level shared Wi-Fi. Each house or institute with a dedicated fibre optical connection will also require its own ONT installed by the service provider, though within the house or institute they can have their own Wi-Fi setup. A Common Service Centre panchayat kiosk for the online government e-services will be provided at each gram panchayat level.


Last mile connectivity

#
Hotspot (Wi-Fi) A hotspot is a physical location where people can obtain Internet access, typically using Wi-Fi technology, via a wireless local-area network (WLAN) using a router connected to an Internet service provider. Public hotspots may be created b ...
at each village-level within the gram panchayat:
Each gram panchayat is connected by the low-maintenance fibre optic technology, and each village under the gram panchayat is connected by a Wi-Fi hotspot tower of up to 15-meter height with a range of 5 to 7 km installed by ISP telecom companies by using short-range 5.48 GHz unused radiofrequency. Comparatively easier and faster to deploy higher-maintenance wireless technology, for Wi-Fi Hotspots in each village under the gram panchayat, is used only for the last mile connectivity. Wi-Fi router and
Antenna Antenna ( antennas or antennae) may refer to: Science and engineering * Antenna (radio), also known as an aerial, a transducer designed to transmit or receive electromagnetic (e.g., TV or radio) waves * Antennae Galaxies, the name of two collid ...
require continuous supply of power, hence an
emergency power system An emergency power system is an independent source of electrical power that supports important electrical systems on loss of normal power supply. A standby power system may include a standby generator, batteries and other apparatus. Emergency p ...
is needed during the
power blackout A power outage (also called a powercut, a power out, a power failure, a power blackout, a power loss, or a blackout) is the loss of the electrical power network supply to an end user. There are many causes of power failures in an electricity ...
, e.g.
power inverter A power inverter, inverter or invertor is a power electronic device or circuitry that changes direct current (DC) to alternating current (AC). The resulting AC frequency obtained depends on the particular device employed. Inverters do the opp ...
with a
backup battery A backup battery provides power to a system when the primary source of power is unavailable. Backup batteries range from small single cells to retain clock time and date in computers, up to large battery room facilities that power uninterruptible po ...
that may be recharged by the
solar panel A solar cell panel, solar electric panel, photo-voltaic (PV) module, PV panel or solar panel is an assembly of photovoltaic solar cells mounted in a (usually rectangular) frame, and a neatly organised collection of PV panels is called a photo ...
. Reliance Jio, Idea Cellular, Airtel, and Vodafone have already connected their 4G Base Towers to BharatNet fibre optic OLT to provide last mile wireless coverage. # Connectivity to the individual homes:
The Local service providers provide broadband connections to individual homes, offering employment and entrepreneurship opportunities to village youth. Once all the gram panchayats have been connected by the dedicated fibre optical network, the last mile connectivity to all villages will be provided by the commercial telecom operators by expanding the current national network of 38,000 Wi-Fi hotspots to 700,000 Wi-Fi hotspots to cover all 625,000 villages in India. , union government subsidy support will be given to the telecom service operators for rolling out Wi-Fi hotspots in commercially non-viable villages. BharatNet has offered the bulk broadband bandwidth at 75% discounted rates to the commercial telecom operators so that they can offer deeply discounted monetised competitive deals to the rural wireless broadband customers. Commercial operators
Reliance Jio Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited, doing business as Jio, is an Indian telecommunications company and a subsidiary of Jio Platforms, headquartered in Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. It operates a national LTE network with coverage across all ...
,
Bharti Airtel Bharti Airtel Limited, commonly known as (d/b/a) Airtel, is an Indian multinational telecommunications services company based in New Delhi. It operates in 18 countries across South Asia and Africa, as well as the Channel Islands. Currently, ...
,
Idea Cellular Idea Cellular (commonly referred to as Idea, and stylised as ''!dea'') was an Indian mobile network operator based at Mumbai, Maharashtra. Idea was a pan-India integrated GSM operator and had 220.00 million subscribers as of June 2018. ...
and
Vodafone Vodafone Group Public limited company, plc () is a British Multinational corporation, multinational Telephone company, telecommunications company. Its registered office and Headquarters, global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It ...
have already connected their 4G-based-broadband base towers to BharatNet at various locations to provide the high speed last mile wireless broadband connectivity."Bharat turns new telco battleground."
Daily News and Analysis Publications established in 2005 Newspapers published in Mumbai English-language newspapers published in India Daily newspapers published in India Essel Group 2005 establishments in Maharashtra ...
, 14 November 2017.
"Jio, Airtel take lead in signing up for BharatNet connectivity."
Economic Times, 14 November 2017.
"What is BharatNet project and why it's a big boost for PM Narendra Modi's Digital India dream?."
The Financial Express (India) ''The Financial Express'' is an Indian English-language business newspaper owned by The Indian Express Group. It has been published by the Indian Express ''The Indian Express'' is an English-language Indian daily newspaper founded in 19 ...
, 14 November 2017.
The central government will set up sufficient Wi-Fi hotspots to cover 100 million citizens by 2020, and tender will be floated for this soon (as of November 2017). Additionally,
Indian Railways Indian Railways (IR) is a statutory body under the ownership of Ministry of Railways, Government of India that operates India's national railway system. It manages the fourth largest national railway system in the world by size, with a tot ...
will provide Wi-Fi hotspots, limited free access, and unlimited paid access, at 600 major stations by March 2018 and all of its 8,500 stations by March 2019 with an outlay of , with 1,200 large stations catering to the rail passengers and the remaining 7,300 stations catering to both rail passengers and local population in remote and rural areas, including facilities to access government services or e-purchase of commercial products (c. 7 Jan 2018).Indian Railways to equip all 8,500 stations with Wi-Fi
Economic Times, 7 Jan 2018.
HRD ministry has instructed 50,000 colleges and technical in India to offer free Wi-Fi to students and staff with capped free data quota, after which data will have to be purchased. Out of these
Reliance Jio Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited, doing business as Jio, is an Indian telecommunications company and a subsidiary of Jio Platforms, headquartered in Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. It operates a national LTE network with coverage across all ...
has offered to deploy free Wi-Fi connectivity to 38,000 colleges, which has been supported by
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is a regulatory body set up by the Government of India under section 3 of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Act, 1997. It is the regulator of the telecommunications sector in India. ...
(TRAI) and the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).HRD ministry asks colleges to provide free Wi-Fi on campus
Hindustan Times ''Hindustan Times'' is an Indian English-language daily newspaper based in Delhi. It is the flagship publication of HT Media, an entity controlled by the KK Birla family, and is owned by Shobhana Bhartia. It was founded by Sunder Singh Lyall ...
, 18 Jan 2018.
Some Startups, such as Velmenni Research, under the
Startup India Startup India is an initiative of the Government of India. The campaign was first announced by Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi during his speech on 15 August 2015. The action plan of this initiative is focussing on three areas: # Simplif ...
, are working on solutions to offer
Li-Fi Li-Fi (also written as LiFi) is a wireless communication technology which utilizes light to transmit data and position between devices. The term was first introduced by Harald Haas during a 2011 TEDGlobal talk in Edinburgh. Li-Fi is a light comm ...
access via LED lights at homes at a speed 100 faster than ordinary WI-FI bandwidth.Forget Wi-Fi: This startup tech can power the Internet using light bulbs and is 100 times faster
Economic Times, 16 Jan 2018.


Implementation

BharatNet is a middle layer for providing broadband connectivity across all
Community Development Block In India, a Community development block (CD block) or simply Block is a sub-division of Tehsil, administratively earmarked for planning and development. The area is administered by a Block Development Officer (BDO), supported by several technic ...
s (CDB), 250,000 village
gram panchayat Gram Panchayat () is a basic village-governing institute in Indian villages. It is a democratic structure at the grass-roots level in India. It is a political institute, acting as cabinet of the village. The Gram Sabha work as the general bod ...
s covering 630,000 inhabited villages of
states and union territories of India India is a federal union comprising 28 states and 8 union territories, with a total of 36 entities. The states and union territories are further subdivided into districts and smaller administrative divisions. History Pre-indepen ...
. As of July 2021, Phase-I was complete and 150,000 Gram Panchayats and associated villages had been service ready with 5.09 lakh km of Optical Fibre Cable already laid, the 29,500 crore (US$4 billion) PPP tender for remaining nearly 100,000 gram panchayats and all the individual inhabited villages under hose panchayats spread across 16 states was floated in 2021 with target date for broadband connectivity of 2023.Global tenders worth rs 29500 crore invited for bharatnet
Money Control, 20 July 2021.


BharatNet Phase-I (Completed: Dec 2017)

BharatNet Phase-I, across 13 states and UTs was completed in December 2017 with the Phase-I union government funding share of . It connected 100,000 gram panchayat, covering 300,000 villages by laying 300,000 km of optical fibre network.BharatNet Phase-II plan
IIT Bombay The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay or IITB) is a public research university and technical institute in Powai, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. It is considered as one of the best engineering universities in India and is top ranked ...
.
BharatNet Phase-I status by states and UT.
/ref> 13 states and UTs in this phase were:
Andaman and Nicobar Islands The Andaman and Nicobar Islands is a union territory of India consisting of 572 islands, of which 37 are inhabited, at the junction of the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. The territory is about north of Aceh in Indonesia and separated f ...
,
Chandigarh Chandigarh () is a planned city in India. Chandigarh is bordered by the state of Punjab to the west and the south, and by the state of Haryana to the east. It constitutes the bulk of the Chandigarh Capital Region or Greater Chandigarh, which al ...
,
Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...
,
Goa Goa () is a state on the southwestern coast of India within the Konkan region, geographically separated from the Deccan highlands by the Western Ghats. It is located between the Indian states of Maharashtra to the north and Karnataka to the ...
,
Haryana Haryana (; ) is an Indian state located in the northern part of the country. It was carved out of the former state of East Punjab on 1 Nov 1966 on a linguistic basis. It is ranked 21st in terms of area, with less than 1.4% () of India's land ar ...
,
Karnataka Karnataka (; ISO: , , also known as Karunāḍu) is a state in the southwestern region of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act. Originally known as Mysore State , it was renamed ''Karnat ...
,
Kerala Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South ...
,
Lakshadweep Lakshadweep (), also known as Laccadives (), is a union territory of India. It is an archipelago of 36 islands in the Arabian sea, located off the Malabar Coast. The name ''Lakshadweep'' means "one lakh islands" in Sanskrit, though the Lac ...
,
Manipur Manipur () ( mni, Kangleipak) is a state in Northeast India, with the city of Imphal as its capital. It is bounded by the Indian states of Nagaland to the north, Mizoram to the south and Assam to the west. It also borders two regions of Myanm ...
,
Meghalaya Meghalaya (, or , meaning "abode of clouds"; from Sanskrit , "cloud" + , "abode") is a states and union territories of India, state in northeastern India. Meghalaya was formed on 21 January 1972 by carving out two districts from the state of As ...
,
Puducherry Puducherry or Pondicherry may refer to: * Puducherry (union territory), a union territory of India ** Pondicherry, capital of the union territory of Puducherry ** Puducherry district, a district of the union territory of Puducherry ** Puducherry t ...
,
Sikkim Sikkim (; ) is a state in Northeastern India. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China in the north and northeast, Bhutan in the east, Province No. 1 of Nepal in the west and West Bengal in the south. Sikkim is also close to the Siligur ...
and
West Bengal West Bengal (, Bengali: ''Poshchim Bongo'', , abbr. WB) is a state in the eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabitants within an area of . West Bengal is the fourt ...
.BSNL lays 11,005-km optical fibre cable in state
The Tribune, 13 Jan 2018.
To provide the last mile connectivity for the 100,000-gram panchayats in Phase-I, contracts were signed to connect 30,500 village panchayats by Vodafone, 30,000 village panchayats by Reliance Jio. 2,000 by Vodafone and 1,000 by Idea Cellular, these Wi-Fi hotspots were activated after connecting BharatNet fibre optics OLT to commercial operator's cell phone base stations.
Latest weekly update


BharatNet Phase-II (Target: March 2023)

BharatNet Phase-II, will connect the remaining nearly 145,000 gram panchayats covering 325,000 villages through additional 1 million km of optical fibre. Phase-II commenced with the union government funding share of , with the current 250 km per day pace of optical fibre network roll out which needs to be raised to 500 km per day to achieve the completion target of March 2019. DoT will invest on BharatNet in
Northeast India , native_name_lang = mni , settlement_type = , image_skyline = , image_alt = , image_caption = , motto = , image_map = Northeast india.png , ...
, including erecting 6,673 towers to connect 8,621 villages at the cost of and additional 4,240 gram panchayats by satellite broadband connectivity.DoT to spend Rs 10,743 cr to improve connectivity in NE
Business Standard, 16 Jan 2018.


Merger of BSNL and BBNL

On 27th July 2022. The cabinet decided to merge state owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited and Bharat Broadband Network Limited


See also

*
Internet in India Internet in India began in 1986 and was available only to the educational and research community. General public access to the internet began on 15 August 1995, and as of July 2022 there are 833 million active internet users that comprise 59.28% ...
*
List of countries by Internet connection speeds This is a list of countries by Internet connection speed for average and median data transfer rates for Internet access by end-users. The difference between average and median speeds is the way individual measurements are aggregated. Average speed ...
*
List of countries by number of broadband Internet subscriptions This article contains a sortable list of countries by number of broadband Internet subscriptions and penetration rates, using data compiled by the International Telecommunication Union. List The list includes figures for both fixed wired broad ...
*
List of countries by number of Internet users Below is a sortable list of countries by number of Internet users, for 2020. Internet users are defined as persons who accessed the Internet in the last 12 months from any device, including mobile phones.The statistics for numbers of Internet ...
*
List of countries by smartphone penetration This is a list of countries by smartphone penetration. These numbers are based on the top countries by percentage of population owning a smartphone (so smaller countries are absent) and come from Newzoo's Global Mobile Market Report (the numbers we ...


References


Citations


External links

*
Official live current overall summary status report

Official Phase-I status breakdown by statePhase-II Planning
IIT Bombay The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay or IITB) is a public research university and technical institute in Powai, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. It is considered as one of the best engineering universities in India and is top ranked ...

Collection of Scripts to analyse the district wise data of the progress.
{{Telecommunication companies of India Telecommunications companies of India Government-owned companies of India Proposed infrastructure in India