Broadband connectivity

·         On March 20, 2008 Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology,  Dr. Shakeel Ahmed shared in Rajya Sabha that GoI is very much aware that broadband connectivity is very essential for the development of the country as knowledge based society.    

·         He shared some of the major steps taken and proposed to be taken by GoI to proliferate broadband in India

·         Broadband policy has been announced by the Government during 2004 for accelerated growth of Broadband applications, contributing growth of GDP and enhancement in quality of life through societal applications including tele-education, tele-medicine, e-governance, entertainment as well as employment generation.

·         In order to bring provisioning of broadband connectivity to rural areas under the purview of Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF), the Indian Telegraph Rules have been amended, stream IV has been added under the title “Provision of broadband connectivity to villages in a phased manner”. 

·         State owned Public Sector Unit, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited has identified around 25,576 rural exchanges and has placed order of 1.6 million ports for deployment of broadband services and rural areas.

·         The Government has approved a Common Services Centres (CSCs) Scheme for providing support for establishing 100,000 Common Services Centers in 600,000 villages of India.

·         The Scheme, as approved by the Government of India, envisions CSCs as the front-end delivery points for Government, private and social sector services to rural citizens of India , in an integrated manner.

·         The objective is to develop a platform that can enable Government, private and social sector organizations to align their social and commercial goals for the benefit of the rural population in the remotest corners of the country through a combination of IT-based as well as non-IT-based services.

·         It is proposed to setup a National Knowledge Network for providing broadband connectivity to knowledge Institutions in the country.

·         As per the information available on Internet, China is ahead of our country in broadband connectivity.

·         There were 30,19,521 broadband subscribers as on 31st December 2007.

Details of State-wise Broadband Subscribers as on 31st December 2007.