Come this December, all the villages across Punjab will be connected with 4G — the fourth generation of mobile telecommunications technology.
The assurance was given by Reliance Industries Chairman-cum-Managing Director (CMD) Mukesh Ambani on Tuesday who maintained that his company would connect every village in Punjab with 4G connectivity by December 28 this year.
Ambani, during an interaction with Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal at his Mumbai office, said that Punjab would become the first State in the country to have broadband connectivity at the village level.
He informed that Reliance had already invested Rs 3,500 crore in the state and would give employment to 30,000 people in the next few years.
Ambani, who also agreed to attend the Invest Punjab Summit on October 28 at Mohali, said that Reliance would provide low cost connectivity to students at 70 per cent discounted rates. “We want to connect schools and give students access to global libraries,” he added.
Expressing satisfaction at the work done by Reliance on the 4G front, including laying of around 7,000 km of fibre, Sukhbir said that the Government was in the process of coming out with a policy to allow all interested companies to provide broadband connectivity to all schools and colleges.
He added that the
Punjab Government had allowed all broadband providers to set up towers on Government buildings.
Disclosing the company’s future plans for Punjab, Ambani said that Reliance would invest Rs 1,000 crore on its Hoshiarpur plant which produced specialty fibres in the next few years.
“Besides, the company is keen to integrate agriculture markets so that the farmer got the best remunerative price for his crop. We have done this in Karnataka and would like to establish a similar platform in Punjab,” the Reliance CMD added. Badal assured Ambani that the State would explore ways and means to take this proposal forward.
Sukhbir, who is currently on his Mumbai tour to woo investors and big industrial houses to invest in Punjab, also met corporate honchos including Anand Mahindra of Mahindra and Mahindra, Harsh Goenka of RPG Enterprises and Dilip S Shanghvi of Sun Pharma.