The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is implementing the BharatNet project for providing the last mile connectivity to all Gram Panchayats (GPs) of the country. As part of this project, CSC e-Governance Services India Limited -a Special Purpose Vehicle (CSC-SPV) had been assigned to provide the last mile connectivity, through 1Wi-Fi Access Point and 5 FTTH in about 77,115 GPs. As of now, 85717Wi-Fi Access Points and 126301 FTTH connections have been installed in these GPs.

CSC-SPV were primarily set up to manage the ecosystem of CSCs for their execution/operations and functioning for extending governance in public services viz Aadhaar Card registration, PAN Card registration, booking for train and air tickets, bank-related information/Financial Inclusion Services, Educational Services, G2C/B2C services, Healthcare services etc, to every citizen. However, CSC-SPV was assigned a pilot project for laying overhead optical fiber from GPs to villages in Bihar only under BharatNet project in October; 2020. Under this project, CSC has connected 30953 villages out of the total target of 32268 villages. In these villages, more than 28,599 Wi-Fi Access Points and 35,084 FTTH connections have been provided in Govt Institution in these villages.

CSC-SPV has to coordinate with various agencies including Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) for stable backhaul and other maintenance issues such as; optical fibre faults, batteries maintenance, air-conditioning, Solar power system, etc at block level.

This information was given by the Minister of State for Electronics & Information Technology, Shri Rajeev Chandrasekhar in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.

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RKJ/M