Govt to take broadband to every corner of India

Read in Mint (Oct 11, 2010) an article titled “Play it again, Sam” which is about Tech Czar Sam Pitroda working on taking broadband to every corner of India. Few highlights,

• Panchayats, schools will be connected to fibre optic
• Building a vast information network, Public Information Infrastructure (PII), which will make the government a lot more transparent
• The project worth Rs 27,000 crore (UIDAI (Aadhaar)‘s budget too is Rs 27,000 crore)
• PII will connect each of the country’s 250,000 panchayats to fast, broadband connections
• The larger plan is to build a giant, nationwide, broadband network in India that will integrate citizens with their governments, departments with other departments, all educational/scientific institutions
• Many applications will be built over PII, UID/Aadhaar is one
• Govt wants to help the poor by plugging them into the ‘broadband’ economic engine
• Youth should be given a chance to build businesses around wired India
• To be completed by 2013, Sam Pitroda wants it done by 2012. We too want it by 2012 🙂

Update:

• Dec 31, 2017: BharatNet programme connected 1 lakh gram panchayats (GPs) with optic fibre