It is estimated that there are about 55,669 villages in the country that do not have mobile coverage. The State of Jharkhand has 5,949 villages having no mobile service coverage. Union Minister for Communication and Information Technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad, informed the Rajya Sabha on Friday in response to the questions from Rajya Sabha Member Parimal Nathwani.
Nathwani wanted to know the details of Government’s measures to achieve goal of good governance and use of IT Projects and technology to achieve the same.
In accordance with the statement tabled in the House, the number of villages of Jharkhand that do not have mobile coverage is the second highest in the country with the State of Orissa topping the list with 10,398 villages to be covered.
The Minister stated that the mobile coverage to the uncovered villages is proposed to be provided in a phase manner over a period of five years.
Prasad also informed that the Government of India is implementing the Digital India Program with a vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and the knowledge economy.
The focus of the program is to transform the e-Governance services by way of introducing latest technologies such as Cloud, Mobile Platform and focus on integrating such services, he said.
The Minister also stated that the latest technology like IPv6, MPls, IPsec for safety and also 4G/lTE compliance are proposed to be considered for implementation when up-gradation of the present State Wide Area Network (SWAN) Project is undertaken in various States/Union Territories.
The Minister further stated that the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) Project was planned to connect all Gram Panchayats in the country through Optical Fibre Cables (OFC) and at least, 100 mbps bandwidth will be provided in all 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayats.
As on July 12, 2015 OFC laying in 22,180 Gram Panchayats is completed, the Minister added.
Prasad said that in order to review the strategy and approach towards speedy implementation of NOFN, the Government of India had constituted a Committee on 14.01.15, which submitted its Report on 31.03.15.
The Committee recommended that the NOFN Project be renamed as “Bharat Net” to realize the vision of Digital India, in partnership with States and Private Sectors, the Minister stated.