The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) plans to utilise about 50 per cent of the Rs 350 billion corpus that is likely to be available in the Universal Services Obligation (USO) Fund in the next three years for subsidising country-wide rollout of rural wireless broadband networks.
It is believed that Rs 160 billion will be available as subsidy to the two operators who win the contract to provide broadband connectivity to 0.5 million villages across 22 circles.
The peak subsidy outflow is based on payout of Rs 80 billion per operator over a five-year period. The actual subsidy payout will be linked to the lowest bid per circle on conclusion of the tendering process, which is likely to be initiated in a month.
Currently, operators contribute 5 per cent of their annual revenues to the USOF and the unused amount is estimated at Rs 168.04 billion.
The objective of the project is to offer high-speed connectivity to individual homes, panchayats, hospitals, schools and factories across more than 0.5 million villages in 22 service areas.
Depending on the package, the user will be able to avail download speeds ranging from 512 kbps to 2 Mbps. Also, a host of applications will be available, such as streaming audio and video, online games, telephone calling and video conferencing.
