Centre To Provide Telecom Connectivity To 25K Villages In 2025: Scindia

In an effort to ensure full saturation in the country, as many as 25,000 villages are set to have telecom connectivity by mid-2025. According to the Telecom Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, such villages without telecom and mobile internet will be connected as the state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam or BSNL will roll out its 4G network by mid-2025 with around 1 lakh telecom towers.

Speaking at the 51st national management convention of the All India Management Association, the Minister said that while around 4,50,000 towers have been erected across the country, there are still some villages which remain unconnected. “We have committed to putting up close to 20,000 towers and committed Rs 45,000 crore towards that initiative by mid-2025,” he stated.

As northeast regions of the country have the most number of villages that are yet to be connected (around 6,000), the telecom department has provided connectivity to half of such villages, as per the minister who also heads the Ministry for the Development of North Eastern Region.

The Centre has identified three major targets which include Connection expansion, new technologies and indigenous telecom production. The minister said that the country is producing mobile phones as part of the Bharat 6G alliance and the nation seeks to hold around 10 per cent of international patents in the sector.

However, the deadlines for telecom connectivity have been extended on a few occasions earlier as the country struggled to meet the deadlines. Ravi Shankar Prasad, the former telecom minister, directed the companies to connect 43,000 villages without basic telephony services within a year in 2019 when he was in charge of the ministry. Later, in April 2023, Devusinh Chahuhan, who was the then Minister of State for Telecom, stated that the centre would cover over 38,000 villages without 4G connection by 2024.