DoT plans ₹10,000 crore tender to set up more rural Wi-Fi hotspots

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) will soon issue a revised tender inviting bidders to set up more public wi-fi hotpots per gram panchayat than it earlier envisaged to ensure higher proliferation of high-speed broadband across 2.5 lakh gram panchayats.

“The earlier tender was for ₹4,000 crore and at that time it was decided to set up two wi-fi hotspots per gram panchayat. Now we want to set up five hotspots per gram panchayat. The new tender will now be for ₹10,000 crore...this should happen in a week,” a person aware of the matter said on condition of anonymity. Out of ₹10,000 crore, almost ₹3,600 crore is expected to come from the government as viability gap funding.

The wi-fi hotspots will be available for the public in rural areas and will also connect social institutions such as police stations, primary health centres, schools, and post offices.

“The revised budget has to be approved by the Telecom Commission at its next meeting,” the person quoted above said.

The Telecom Commission, which is the highest decisionmaking authority at DoT, is scheduled to meet on June 29, when it is expected to also discuss the telecom regulator’s recommendations on net neutrality and approve the draft of the national digital communications policy.

DoT on May 1 floated the draft of the policy for public consultation, with a target of attracting investments of $100 billion in digital communications by 2022 apart from offering universal broadband at 50 mbps.

It aims to provide 1 gbps connectivity to all gram panchayats by 2020 and 10 gbps by 2022. Other targets include enabling 100 mbps broadband on demand to all key development institutions and deploying 5 million public wi-fi hotspots by 2020 and 10 million by 2022.

These hotspots would ride on BharatNet, earlier called the National Optical Fibre Network, which is the government’s plan to connect 2.5 lakh gram panchayats with high-speed internet.

NEW DELHI: