National Broadband Mission Aims To Connect Rural Areas To The Internet By 2022

On December 17 Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister for Communications, Law and Justice and Electronics and Information Technology announced the NBM (National Broadband Mission) which will make sure that all the rural villages across the count will receive high-speed internet services in the upcoming year. The NBM is announced to keep an eye on the growth of digitalization in the country. This mission is said to bridge the digital gap rural and urban areas, this will also provide affordable broadband access to all.

According to the report, NBM will make sure that the broadband connectivity rollout will be completed by the end of 2022 to all the villages. Meanwhile, NDCP (National Digital Communication Policy) is different from NBM. The report suggests that the mission is aiming to lay 30 lakhs route km of Optical Fiber Cable in rural and remote areas, this will also increase the tower density from 0.42 to 1.0 per thousand people by 2024.

"Our members have been consistently putting in concerted efforts in this direction and we further expect to attract investments to the tune of 7 to 8 billion in a year and look at deploying 1 tower per 1,000 citizens. COAI is also working with the State Government and local bodies for uniform implementation of the Right of Way Rules as State participation in terms of facilitating and expediting Row will be key to this mission," says Rajan S Mathews, DG, COAI.

This mission will likewise have BRI (Broadband Readiness Index) which will monitor the availability of communications and help in creating a policy ecosystem within a state or union territory. The government will also make an advanced fibre map across the country. This will help in tracking Digital Communication systems and infrastructure.

This is going to be a huge project with a total investment of $100 billion which is Rs. 7 lakh crore. Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) will invest Rs. 70,000 crore in this mission.