To ensure, village panchayats that are in the border and in Naxal-affected states enter the mainstream, the government has launched an ambitious yet crucial project to connect 5,000 such village panchayats with satellite-enabled broadband connectivity.
All these villages are located in the border region, Naxal-affected states, and island territories.
Village panchayats that will benefit from this project will the states of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Tripura, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, island territories of Lakshadweep and Andaman and Nicobar, and Galwan Valley in Eastern Ladakh where the Indian Army fought back against Chinese aggression.
The project will be under the BharatNet programme and it will be implemented by the government by March 2021.
Hughes Communications India and Telecommunications Consultants India Limited (TCIL) has been chosen for the implementation of the project.
Utilising the ISRO’s GSAT-19 and GSAT-11 satellites along with the Hughes Jupiter SystemUnder these villages that never had proper means of communication will now have high-speed broadband internet connectivity.
Hughes will also provide solar-powered network operations and user terminals, installing equipment at every site, and manage the services to ensure speeds of up to 10 megabits per second.