Broadband network target for FY15 likely to be halved, USOF tells Ravi Shankar Prasad

KOLKATA: The central government may be preparing to declare broadband connectivity a fundamental right, but the key project for taking high-speed internet to the hinterlands, national optic fibre network, is running far behind its target. The Universal Services Obligation Fund (USOF), which is funding the national optic fibre network (NOFN) project, has informed telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad that the broadband coverage target for 2014-15 “will be halved”, an official said.
“The telecom minister has been informed at a recent NOFN review meeting that it will be impossible to extend high-speed broadband connectivity beyond 50,000 gram panchayats instead of the targeted one lakh panchayats in 2014-15 as bulk of cable laying, trenching and ducting work is incomplete,” a top USOF official told ET. The USOF is an independent telecom department arm that subsidises rural broadband infrastructure rollouts of national importance.

State-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, RailTel and PowerGrid Corp, which are executing the NOFN project, told the review meeting that they were facing challenges in concluding cable laying, trenching and ducting work in their respective zones, said the USOF official who was present at the NOFN review meeting. USOF now expects the three-phase broadband coverage to be concluded earliest in March 2017, which would translate in a five-year delay since the project has already suffered a two-year time overrun. BSNL, which will handle bulk of the cable laying and trenching responsibilities for the project, could not be reached for immediate comment.

BSNL, RailTel and PowerGrid have bagged contracts for cable laying and trenching in 70:15:15 ratio. The total value of these contracts will be over Rs 11,000 crore. Further delays in the Rs 21,000-crore NOFN rollout will derail the government’s pan-India broadband penetration target of 175 million and 600 million subscribers by 2017 and 2020, respectively. At present, India has only 15 million broadband customers.

India wants to hasten the NOFN rollout as it will be the backbone of a rural broadband ecosystem. More so, since telecom and rural development ministries have recently agreed to jointly fund delivery of government-to-citizen e-services, ranging from e-health and e-education to e-governance and e-commerce, across the 2.5 lakh gram panchayats by leveraging the national optic fibre network backbone.