Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced on Tuesday that commercial 5G services would be rolled out in India in the 2022-23 fiscal year.
Presenting the Union Budget, Sitharaman said the government would hold auction for allocation of spectrum for 5G this year. The launch of 5G in India appears to be delayed by a year than initially expected.
Sitharaman said a production-linked incentive scheme for 5G services would be promoted. She also said rural broadband would be expanded.
“To enable affordable broadband and mobile service proliferation in rural and remote areas, five percent of annual collections under the universal service obligations fund will be located. This will promote R&D and commercialisation of technologies and solutions,” Sitharaman was quoted as saying by NDTV.
Referring to the BharatNet internet project, she said, “Our vision is that all villages and the residents should have the same access to E services, communication facilities and resources as urban areas and their residents the contracts for laying optical fibre in all villages, including remote areas will be awarded under the Bharat NET project through PPP in 2022-23. Completion is expected in 2025.”
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BharatNet seeks to provide broadband services to 361,000 villages in 16 states. “The Economic Survey, released on Monday, reported that 5.46 lakh km optical fibre cable has been laid. It further said that a total of 1.73 lakh gram panchayats have been connected by optical fibre cable (OFc) and 1.59 lakh gram panchayats are service-ready on OFC, as of September 27, 2021,” Hindustan Times reported.