Uttar Pradesh ‘giving a cold shoulder’ to BharatNet Project

New Delhi: BharatNet, the ambitious national broadband venture, is facing major deployment challenges in the country’s Hindi heartland, a top government official said.

Uttar Pradesh has particularly been reluctant to use the BharatNet optic fibre broadband network for electronic delivery of public services.

“Though most of the BharatNet project work is expected to be concluded by next March, there is virtually no eagerness to use this massive broadband network resource by the state of UP,” said Sanjay Singh, chairman of Bharat Broadband Network Ltd (BBNL), a government-controlled special purpose vehicle (SPV) that is implementing the venture.

BharatNet, a key element of the Modi government’s Digital India drive, aims to provide high-speed internet connectivity to a massive 6.25 lakh villages encompassing 2.5 lakh village blocks across the country.

By contrast, western states such as Maharashtra and Gujarat, he said, are “a lot more keen to leverage the power of BharatNet.” The project is “likely to significantly reduce corruption in delivery of public services electronically.

To surmount the problem, DoT plans to shortly ink MoUs with all state governments for deployment of Wi-Fi hotspots to hasten utilisation of BharatNet services, according to Singh who is also administrator of the Universal Services Obligation Fund (USOF). The USOF is an independent telecom department (DoT) arm that subsidises telecom connectivity infrastructure in rural and commercially unviable areas.

“Wi-Fi will be a game changer, in that, it will boost service utilisation as well as network maintenance,” the BBNL chairman said, adding that the government had received bids for 1.35 lakh panchayats.

BBNL’s Singh though voiced frustration about increasing resistance towards deployment of BharatNet resources in UP at a time when BBNL is under pressure to rapidly operationsalise the broadband venture nationally.

Earlier this month, telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan had hauled up the BBNL chairman and Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) chairman Anupam Shrivastava for failing to operationalise the BharatNet broadband network in numerous village blocks, saying the situation reflected lack of planning and coordination between the two organisations. In a recent letter, she had said disciplinary action would be taken against errant officials tasked with timely conclusion of project work.

Subsequently, BSNL and BBNL have engaged in a war of words, wherein the former has accused the SPV of mismanaging BharatNet implementation and withholding funds meant for vendors.

The BharatNet project, conceived six years ago, and has already missed several deadlines. Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha had revised the last completion deadline to March 31, 2019, but that could be a stiff target now, given that only 1.16 lakh gram panchayats are service-ready

The department has also recently tweaked norms to include network’s lifetime maintenance and marketing with incentive ranging from 10% to 20% for dark fibre utilisation and bandwidth business respectively, to agencies deploying the ambitious program under 32 major and 25 minor packages.