Question : BROADBAND CONNECTIONS

(a) the number of internet broadband subscribers in the country, State-wise and the number of BSNL and MTNL subscribers out of them;

(b) the details of village panchayats covered by internet separately by National Optical Fibre Network, State-wise;

(c) whether the Government has set any target to cover all the village panchayats with internet;

(d) if so, the target fixed and the progress made so far along with the steps taken to achieve the target within a time frame; and

(e) whether the internet broadband services are not satisfactory as there are complaints of frequent break down on servers, slow internet speed and poor connectivity particularly in remote and rural areas and if so, the details thereof and the action taken by the Government to improve the situation?

THE MINISTER OF COMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (SHRI RAVI SHANKAR PRASAD)

(a) There are 254.4 million internet users in the country of which 74.73 million are broadband subscribers. Out of 74.73 million broadband subscribers 19.38 million subscribers are with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL). Service Area-wise details of broadband subscribers is at Annexure – I.

(b) to (d ) Government is implementing National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) project to provide broadband connectivity through Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) to all the Gram Panchayats in the country (approximately 2,50,000 Gram Panchayats) at an estimated cost of Rs. 20,100 Crore by bridging the connectivity gap between Gram Panchayats and Blocks. Under this project, at least 100 Mbps (megabits per second) bandwidth would be made available at each Gram Panchayat (GP) to be used by all the service providers on non- discriminatory basis. Bharat Broadband Nigam Limited (BBNL), a Central Public Sector Undertaking Unit (CPSU) has been created to execute the project. Work is being implemented by BBNL through 3 CPUs viz. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), Railtel and Power Grid Corporation of India Limited (PGCIL). Survey work has been completed by the 3 CPSUs for more than 80% of the Gram Panchayats. Tenders for trenching and pipe laying works have been finalized by 3 CPSUs for 1331 blocks and work has commenced in 617 blocks. Purchase orders for procurement of OFC and electronic transmission equipment Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) have been issued and supply commenced.

NOFN is expected to provide the basic infrastructure for facilitating provision of broadband services in rural areas by telecom service operators. The project to connect all the Gram Panchayats with respective blocks through OFC is envisaged to be completed in a phased manner by December 2016.

Following steps are being taken achieve the target within a time frame:

(i) Execution of project in a phased manner to learn and improve from experiences of project implementation.

(ii) Multi-pronged strategy for execution of work being adopted for accelerated implementation of the project.

(iii) Regular monitoring and review of the project at various levels

(e) Telecom Regulatory Authority of India(TRAI) monitors the performance of the service providers against the Quality of Service benchmarks laid down by TRAI, through the quarterly Performance Monitoring Reports (PMRs) submitted by the service providers for License Service Area as a whole. No separate information is maintained by TRAI for remote and rural areas.

As per the reports submitted by Broadband Service providers, they are generally complying with the benchmarks. The non-compliance with the benchmark is mostly observed in respect of the parameter Service provisioning /Activation time and percentage of faults repaired within 3 working days. TRAI has also been imposing financial disincentive on service providers for failure to comply with quality of service benchmarks.