The government is reportedly planning to merge Bharat Broadband Nigam Limited (BBNL) with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL). This means all work of BBNL at the pan-India level is going to come to BSNL.
BSNL already has a network of over 680,000 kilometres of optical fibre cable (OFC) network. With the proposed merger, BSNL will get 567,000 kilometres of OFC which has been laid across 185,000 village panchayats in the country using Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF).
BBNL is a special purpose vehicle (SPV) that was formed in February 2012, to lay out optical fibre network across 250,000 village panchayats across the country using USOF and provide its access to all telecom operators on a non-discriminatory basis.
