BharatNet Project: BBNL invites global bids for ₹19,041 crore

The Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL) has invited bids for ₹19,041 crore BharatNet project to roll out high-speed broadband services in the rural areas across 16 states, the Ministry of Communications informed on Tuesday.

"BBNL has invited global tender for the development (creation, upgradation, operation and maintenance and utilisation) of BharatNet through a public-private partnership model in 9 separate packages across 16 states for a concession period of 30 years," BBNL said in a statement.

The project will cover an estimated 3.61 lakh villages (including Gram Panchayats) across Kerala, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh.

The existing BharatNet was connecting all the Gram Panchayats (GPs) of the country by laying of OFC (primarily) between Block and GPs. The scope of BharatNet has now been enhanced to connect all the Inhabited Villages of the country, approx. 6.43 lakhs (inclusive of GPs).

The existing BharatNet network across these 16 States will become part of this Project. Last Date of submission of Tender bid is 24/08/2021

The project will be executed through a Design, Build, Finance, Operate and Transfer (DBFOT) concession on PPP framework.

The ministry said the idea is to harness private sector’s capability, capacity, and efficiency for O&M, utilization and revenue generation to make BharatNet more effective and accessible.

This would also serve the objective of BharatNet to have social inclusion, through effective delivery of government schemes and citizen centric services using broadband, and also to strengthen e- Governance, e -Education, Tele medicine, e- Banking etc.

The BharatNet infrastructure is a middle mile network that is presently leased to service providers for providing affordable high-speed broadband to rural population – individuals, households and institutions. BharatNet is government's flagship project and is considered to be the backbone of ‘Digital India’ aiming to reduce the digital divide between urban and rural India.