The Government of India has made plans to provide mobile connectivity in 55,669 villages all over the country by March 2019. This plan will be implemented in phases in which it commissions a project to connect 8,621 villages in the north-eastern region by installing 321 mobile tower sites by September 2017, according to the Department of Telecom (DoT).
This comprehensive telecom development plan for the north-eastern region is estimated at a cost of Rs 5,336.18 crores. This amount has already been approved by the government.
A total of 1,517 towers have been identified by Ministry of Home Affairs out of 2199 in the areas affected by Left Wing Extremism (LWE), DoT said.
In the mission of connecting rural India through high-speed broadband, DoT said it has completed the setting of optic fiber in 48,199-gram panchayats as on April 25, 2016.
The government has started the BharatNet project in mission mode in rural areas to connect all 2.50 lakh gram panchayats which have over 600 million people. This mission will also support e-governance services, e-commerce, telemedicine, Tele-education, financial services, among others.