State owned telco, BSNL which has wireline infrastructure connecting lakhs of Indian villages is on an aggressive broadband expansion spree by putting those villages on the information superhighway.
In a recent announcement, the Ministry of communications has said that it will establish 28,000 wired broadband exchanges and 6,000 satellite sites to bridge the digital lifestyle in villages 🙂 I happened to bump into an engineer from Dhawar Telecom District, Karnataka and he was carrying a DSLAM equipment o be installed in one of the nearby villages. I was surprised that the village with population of 200-250 had established 15 connections 🙂
BSNL Rural Broadband Plans are available at subsidized rates. A 1 GB Data Transfer Plan @ 512 Kbps speed will cost the Rural folks mere Rs 150 / month and the differential will be compensated from the universal Service Obligation fund by the Government.
By 2011, we expect all the Indian villages to be on the information superhighway. So plan your portals and applications keeping them in mind and don’t forget to localize 🙂
