State IT department intends to connect 14,500 village councils by May-end.
Soon, electricity poles will not just bring power to villages, but also connect them digitally.
Maharashtra government has come up with an initiative, wherein electric poles will be used to provide internet connectivity to remote villages in the state to bridge the digital divide.
Under this plan, 27920 gram panchayats in the state will be connected with optical fibre cable (OFC) of the capacity 100 MBPS by 2018-end. The project undertaken under Bharat Net initiative of the Digital India program, will connect schools, hospitals and veterinary centres, ensuring a major thrust for electronic access to these services.
“Earlier, this fibre had to be taken to these villages only through the underground route. However, considering geographical problems it would be difficult to do so through rivers and mountains. Hence, we decided to usepoles of Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MahaVitaran) for hybrid, last-mile connectivity,” Vijay Kumar Gautam, principal secretary of the state Information Technology (IT) department told DNA.
Maharashtra has around 1.80 crore electricity poles and the IT department has started geo-tagging them. “The Government of India has revised guidelines for the second phase and adopted a liberal format… now, we will use all methods including underground, overhead and satellite to provide connectivity,” said Gautam, adding that costs were also expected to come down to Rs 4,200 crore due to a change in these rules.
Gautam said around 11,000 gram panchayats were covered already, and they intend to connect 14,500 village councils by May-end.
He added that the Centre wanted the project to be executed in a “linear topology” mode where the connectivity is provided in a sequential chain. Though the technology is cheaper to implement, in case the cable is snapped at one point, connectivity to other gram panchayats would also be affected.
Gautam said that hence the project would be executed in “mesh-ring topology” to make it self-sustaining for projects like e-health and e-education. “The costs are around 15 to 20% higher, but the network is reliable and will allow sustainable communication… the state government will bear this extra cost,” said Gautam, adding that this would allow the state government to monetise the network by allowing the setup of rural BPOs and supply chain management.
Nagpur has become the first digital district in India with all 776 gram panchayats being connected via fibre.
About Bharat Net Initiative:
The Bharat Net initiative of Digital India program aims at connecting all gram panchayats in the country to a high speed digital highway using optical fibre, making it one of the largest rural broadband connectivity projects.
The connectivity will also allow villagers to access government to citizen (G2C) services, e-health, e-education and e-agriculture facilities and allow youth to upgrade their skills using this broadband highway.
The network can be used for creation of last mile delivery agents for e-commerce portals, rural BPOs, warehouses and supply chain management systems by private players. This will allow heavy capex sectors to come to villages.
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