Govt to invest Rs 25,000 cr to provide broadband connectivity

The government has lined up investments of about Rs 25,000 crore toward laying of optic- fibre cables to provide broadband connectivity right up to village level by 2015, a top DoT official said today.
"The reality is, the next big burst of growth will come from data.
"And that is why effort is to increase the penetration from the present level of about 15 million broadband connectivity to about 175 million broadband connectivity by 2017 and take it to 600 million by 2020," Department of Telecommunications (DoT) Secretary M F Farooqui said.
"...We are going to invest roughly about Rs 25,000 crore on laying optic fibre which will provde connectivity right upto the village panchayat levels," he said at the 12th edition of 'CONNECT 2013' organised by trade body CII here.

"Once this is done, this fibre can become the medium for carrying all kind of services -- e-governance, entertainment, education, health, telemedicine and can create a lot of local products at the district level, at village level at the local dialect," he said.
He said IT industry and the government should work together in building the IT policy over a period of time.

"There are many new areas. For example, in telecom policy we are looking at how to share the infrastructure. We want to be really competitive. We are working on it (how to share infrastructure)...," he said.
When asked what was the time frame for investing the Rs 25,000 crore for providing the broadband connectivity, he later told PTI that the government has fixed a time frame of about two years.

"We are looking at completing it by September 2015," he said.