Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday announced 10,000-crore outlay for the 2018-19 fiscal on the expansion of telecom infrastructure under various government projects in the country.
“I have provided ₹10,000 crore in 2018-19 for creation and augmentation of this telecom infrastructure,” Mr. Jaitley said in his budget speech while referring to work done under government’s Bharat Net project.
The Bharat Net project aims to connect 2.5 lakh gram panchayats by March 2019.“The task of connecting one lakh gram panchayats with high speed optic fibre network has been completed under Phase 1 of Bharat Net program.
This has enabled broadband access to cover …rural Indians in about 2.5 lakh villages. The government also proposed to set up 5 lakh wifi hotspots which will provide broadband access to five crore rural citizens,” Mr. Jaitley said.
