50 more AirFibre sector antennas to be deployed in Bihar in 6 months, says Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad

On Saturday, BSNL took a step forward towards the nation’s vison of broadband for all. A Next Generation Network Telephone Exchange at New Bihar Vidhan Mandal compound, and Bharat AirFibre service at Danapur Telephone Exchange in Bihar was inaugurated by Union Minister for Communications, Electronics, IT, Law, and Justice Ravi Shankar Prasad.

The event took place through video conferencing from New Delhi. Speaking on occasion, the minister announced that 50 more AirFibre sector antennas will be deployed in Bihar within the next six months.

The Next Generation Network Telephone exchange has a capacity of 512 telephone wirelines and 128 broadband connections and will currently serve the New and Old Vidhan Mandal and three New Secretariat Blocks A, B and C in Bihar.

Bharat AirFibre has a speed at par with high-speed fibre ‘Fibre to the home’ (FTTH) connections, and can provide faster and reliable internet services in rural areas. The current fibre serves a six kilometre radius.

“During the current times of COVID-19, there is immense scope for digital education, digital skilling, and tele-medicine, and broadband connectivity in rural India will play a crucial role. Bharat AirFibre will help us scale faster and meet the target of covering six lakh villages in 1,000 days,” Ravi Shankar Prasad said.

Working on an unlicensed spectrum having less interference, Bharat AirFibre enables better quality of relay for the subscribers. Being a wireless, reliable, and easy to deploy technology, it will provide connectivity to inaccessible areas that cannot be connected with FTTH.

The subscription starts at a price of Rs 349 per month, making internet accessible and affordable to users in remote areas.

“Bihar government has recently notified Right of Way (RoW) rules to facilitate better deployment of mobile tower antennas and laying of fibre optic cable in the state,” Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Modi said.

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Govt taking measures to provide connectivity in far-flung and border areas, says Ravi Shankar Prasad

The Government of India has given various projects of national and strategic importance to BSNL, and allotted a 4G spectrum to the enterprise worth Rs 14,000 crore.

Network For Spectrum (NFS) and Bharat Net project for optical fibre connectivity which include more than 3,000 gram panchayats of strategic Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh are some of these projects.

Recently, the government enterprise commissioned a submarine optical fibre cable between Chennai to Andaman and Nicobar Islands at a total cost of Rs 1,224 Crore. Another in the pipeline is a submarine cable connectivity between the Lakshadweep Islands and the mainland.

On the customer engagement front, BSNL has provided almost three lakh FTTH and broadband connections across the country to meet the internet demands of ‘work from home’ during the last six months. They have also introduced new tariff plans and simplified the process on the BSNL portal to improve digital engagement.