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Broadband services to cost less in rural areas

New Delhi: In a significant push to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Digital India campaign, the government has announced affordable tariff structure for broadband services in rural and remote areas.
According to Union Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha, the first phase of the national optic fibre network would be completed by December this year which would provide internet access to 1 lakh gram panchayats and generate about 2 lakh jobs.
The government's flagship project BharatNet, which aims to connect 2.5 lakh gram panchayats by March 2019, has entered its service provisioning phase. At present, the optical fibre cable (OFC) connectivity has been achieved in 1,03,275 gram panchayats by laying fibre for 2,38,677 km; the minister affirmed while having a discussion) with reporters over the achievements of the ministry on Tuesday.
"It's the result of several measures being initiated by the ministry to accelerate the end-to-end connectivity, GPON (gigabit passive optical networks) equipment has been installed in 85,506 GPs, and 75,082 GPs are services ready," Sinha said.
Explaining the affordable tariff structure, Sinha said, "For asymmetrical bandwidth between a block to GPs, the charges per annum varies from Rs 700 per Mbps for up to 10Mbps and Rs 200 per Mbps for 1 Gbps, which is affordable."
"Similarly, for symmetrical bandwidth between a block to GP, charges have been prescribed as Rs1,000 per Mbps up to 10Mbps and Rs 500 per Mbps for 100 Mbps per annum, while tariff for any intermediate bandwidth would be calculated on the pro-rata basis," the minister said.
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