The Ministry of Communications and IT has stated that it is willing to adopt the use of satellite technology, drones or special balloons to facilitate the execution of the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) project. This comes after the telecom industry suggested that the option of satellite technology should be explored to provide broadband connectivity to the gram panchayats.
Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL), the executing agency of the NOFN project, had recently stated that the pace of execution of the project has increased from laying 500 km of cable per month to 1,000 km a week. However, the speed is still below the required target of laying cable, which is around 30,000 km a month.
The government has set a target of rolling out optical fibre cable network across 50,000 village panchayats by March 31, 2015, 100,000 more by March 2016 and another 100,000 by the end of 2016. The estimated cost of the project is around Rs 300 billion.
