Scindia unveils plans for rural net connectivity
Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Friday launched the National Broadband Mission (NBM) 2.0, with the primary objective of providing broadband connectivity to 170,000 villages across the country
Union minister of communications Jyotiraditya Scindia on Friday launched the National Broadband Mission (NBM) 2.0, with the primary objective of providing broadband connectivity to 170,000 villages across the country.
“Our goal is to ensure that at least 60 out of every 100 rural households have access to broadband connectivity. Additionally, we aim to achieve a minimum fixed broadband download speed of 100 Mbps, creating a robust digital infrastructure for rural India,” Scindia said during an event where he launched a suite of citizen-focused initiatives.
Under NBM 2.0, the government aims to expand optical fibre cable connectivity from about 50,000 villages currently to 270,000 villages by 2030 with 95% uptime. It also aims to provide broadband services to at least 90% of anchor institutions such as schools, primary health care centres, angadwadi centres and panchayat offices by 2030.
The Centre also intends to increase the fixed broadband download speeds from the national average of 63.55 Mbps in November 2024 to at least 100 Mbps by 2030. Through the new iteration of the broadband mission, the government wants to make at least 30% of all mobile towers in the country run on sustainable energy by 2030. It also wants to decrease the Right of Way applications’ disposal time from the current 60 days to 30 days by 2030.
During the event, the minister launched the ‘Sanchar Saathi’ mobile app, which allows users to report suspicious calls and messages directly from their mobile phone logs.
He also inaugurated Intra Circle Roaming (ICR) at 4G mobile sites funded using the money collected through the Universal Service Obligation Fund, now called Digital Bharat Nidhi.Through this initiative, a single telecom tower will provide 4G services from multiple telcos at 27,836 sites in rural and remote areas across the country.