New Delhi: The Union Budget on Thursday proposed an overall
allocation of around Rs14,500 crore for the 2018-19 fiscal to augment
telecom infrastructure projects, which include an alternate
communication network for defence services, in the country.
Unveiling
the Union Budget in Parliament, finance minister Arun Jaitley allocated
Rs10,000 crore for expansion of telecom infrastructure managed by the
Department of Telecom (DoT). In addition to that, the government has
also made a provision of Rs4,500 crore for Network for Spectrum project —
an alternate communication network being built by the state-run BSNL
for defence services in lieu of spectrum given by defence ministry for
commercial mobile services.
“I have provided Rs10,000 crore in
2018-19 for creation and augmentation of this telecom infrastructure,”
he said in his budget speech while referring to work done under
government’s Bharat Net project.
As per the document, the
government has proposed to allocate Rs8,000 crore for Bharat Net project
for providing broadband services in 1.5 lakh gram panchayats. The
Bharat Net project aims to connect 2.5 lakh gram panchayats by March
2019. “The task of connecting 1 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
wi-fi hotspots which will provide broadband access to 5 crore rural
citizens,” Jaitley said.
The Rs 10,000 crore outlay includes
Rs524 crore for setting up additional 156 towers in naxal-affected area
and upgradation of bandwidth at 302 VSAT sites from existing 512 Kbps to
1 Mbps. The finance ministry has proposed to allocate Rs450 crore for
25,000 wi-fi hotspots in rural areas, Rs443.29 crore for providing
optical fibre cable based connectivity in Andaman and Nicobar Islands
and Lakshadweep Islands and Rs400 crore to provide 2,817 mobile towers
in 4,119 identified uncovered villages of the North East region.
Jaitley
also announced that the DoT will set up test centre for 5th generation
telecom technology with IIT Chennai. As per budget document, the FM has
proposed to allocate Rs134.48 crore for setting up of the “5G
connectivity Test Bed”.