Rs 1,815 Crores To Be Spent On High-Speed Internet For Over 3,000 Villages In Tamil Nadu

The Tamil Nadu government has inked a Master Service Agreement (MSA) for the BharatNet Phase-I project in the state's Package A districts. At a cost of Rs 1,815 crores, the effort intends to bring high-speed internet to villages of Tamil Nadu. This effort would bind 3,095 village panchayats in Chengalpet, Kancheepuram, Tiruvannamalai, Tiruvallur, Vellore, Krishnagiri, Ranipettai, Tirupati, and Chennai districts.

A minimum scalable bandwidth of 1 gbps would be granted to local panchayats. The Centre had already sanctioned a proposal to interconnect 12,525 Gram Panchayats to Optical Fibre Cables with high-speed bandwidth (OFC). The entire project, though, is split into four packages, labelled A, B, C, and D. One system integrator and one third-party agency would be included in each package. A comparable MSA was inked in October of last year with Larsen & Toubro, ITI Limited, and BECIL to undertake the project in the state.

Government offices and institutions, hospitals, schools, colleges, and panchayats would all operate effectively and provide citizen-centric policies at the village level if high-speed internet was available. The BharatNet infrastructure would also make e-learning, telemedicine, telephones, televisions, and internet connections accessible to the general public at a low cost.

The programme is aimed to enhance the socio-economic life of villages in the state by establishing jobs and services in rural areas. As a result, the establishment of the OFC is a step forward in the State's overall growth