Why in News?
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Tamil Nadu FibreNet Corp signs agreement for BharatNet project implementation. The project aims at providing 1 Gbps bandwidth connectivity to all Gram Panchayats
About
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BharatNet Project was originally launched in 2011 as the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) and renamed as Bharat-Net in 2015
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It is a flagship mission implemented by Bharat Broadband Network Ltd. (BBNL)
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The objective is to facilitate the delivery of e-governance, e-health, e-education, e-banking, Internet and other services to rural India
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The larger vision of the project is to provide on demand, affordable broadband connectivity of 2 Mbps to 20 Mbps for all households and on demand capacity to all institutions
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It is being financed by the Universal Service Obligation Fund of the Department of Telecommunications, through a 5 per cent levy on the revenues of private telecom service providers. Revised Implementation Strategy Of Bharat net
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It will be implemented in PPP mode. The government will provide Rs 19,041 crore as viability gap funding for the project. BharatNet will now extend up to all inhabited villages beyond gram panchayats (GP’s) in 16 states
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It includes creation, upgrade, operation, maintenance and utilisation of Bharat Net by the concessionaire who will be selected by a competitive international bidding process