Top telecom companies such as Vodafone India, Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, and Idea Cellular have displayed interest in the Bharat Net project of the government for offering last-mile connectivity, said Manoj Sinha, the telecom minister, to the media in an interview this week. The companies are interested even as the government accepted state-boosted model with an expenditure of Rs 10,740 Crore for the execution of the program.
While the government will invest Rs 3,700 Crore to transport Wi-Fi facilities in every village panchayats, the minister claimed that the ministry had fixed transaction schemes for telecom companies to rent last-mile spectrum on an annual basis, employing which they can provide facilities to end-users. “Telecom companies are emerging out to provide services. Airtel has shown interest in 10,000 blocks of village for connectivity of 1 Gbps while Reliance Jio needed to operate in 30,000 villages over and above planned schemes by Idea Cellular and Vodafone India,” Sinha claimed to the reporters.
“The speed at which BharatNet is moving ahead has grown manifold to 2.37 Lakh Kms in 2017 from just 322 Kms of OFC laid in June 2014,” the minister clarified to the media. The model generated to pay less for swelling utilization might activate private companies to utilize the government boosted infrastructure to provide faultless services, he claimed. Whilst rentals provided by the government are permanent, tariffs to users employing the high-speed spectrum will be relied on every carrier.
The minister further claimed that the government was planning to transport NTP 9 new telecom policy) by the end of February next year, while a summary might be prepared by end of December. DoT has made 13 working teams, and after discussions within the high level board, opinions might be shared on the portal of DoT for communal comments so as to transport new policy that is user friendly. The government had previous month ordered operators to permit re-confirmation via IVRS and one-time password to make the procedure simpler.
For users who do not have Aadhaar or are from outside the nation, the government claimed that it was finding alternatives such as utilizing passports for confirmation.