Indo-Asian News Service

Communications Minister Manoj Sinha on Wednesday said a total of 10,775 gram panchayats in the country have active WiFi hotspots catering to 11 lakh subscribers.

So far, service providers have installed WiFi hotspots in 39,359 gram panchayats under the WiFi Choupal initiative, the Minister said in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha.

"So far, WiFi hotspots have been installed at 39,359 gram panchayats and out of them, services are being provided at 10,775 gram panchayats, catering to more than 11 lakh subscribers with a data usage of over 50 Tera Byte per month."

He also informed the House that broadband services are ready in over 1.16 lakh gram panchayats out of the 1.21 lakh where optical fibre cables have been laid.

"As on December 2, 2018, a total of 3,01,154 km Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) has been laid connecting 1,21,652 gram panchayats by optical fibre cable, of which 1,16,411 gram panchayats are service ready."

The government plans to connect 250,000 gram panchayats under the BharatNet project by March 31, 2019.