BharatNet PPP: As incentive, DoT to imagine income threat

Having did not get any bids within the first spherical of request for proposal (RFP) for the implementation of BharatNet in public-private-partnership (PPP) mode, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has now determined to imagine the income threat for the second spherical of bidding, sources in know of the event stated.

“Most of the companies had expressed apprehension that the newer connections may not fetch as much revenue in semi-urban and rural areas since there is ample proliferation of mobile internet. We have assured them that they do not need to worry about the revenue and expect good bids in this round,” a senior DoT official stated.

Officials stated that the businesses bidding for the second spherical will solely have to herald the capital expenditure and operational bills for the challenge with out worrying concerning the fluctuations related to the income.

As a part of the revised plan, the federal government is prone to both present a minimal income per 30 days per state to the bidders who efficiently full their challenge or subsidise a few of their operational expenditure.

“We hope to complete the bidding process soon. Depending on the inputs from the bidders, the details of how revenue will be given will be finalised,” one other official stated.

As of February 2022, solely about 1.72 lakh of the initially focused 2.5 lakh gram panchayats had been related to the central grid beneath BharatNet. Official sorces additionally stated on common, solely about 20,000 gram panchayats are being related to the BharatNet grid yearly.

The authorities’s flagship rural web connectivity challenge BharatNet, which has been delayed by over 10 years now, goals to attach all six lakh villages within the nation with excessive velocity broadband web. The scope of the challenge was to initially join solely the two.5 lakh gram panchayats.

On August 15, 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi introduced that the scope of the challenge has now been expanded to attach all of the villages, along with the gram panchayats and the blocks throughout the subsequent 1,000 days. Later in June 2021, the Union Cabinet accredited a plan to rope in personal gamers as effectively for the implementation of the web connectivity scheme within the PPP mode.

Under the PPP mode implementation of BharatNet accredited by the Union Cabinet in June final yr, a concessionaire chosen via a aggressive worldwide bidding course of can be accountable for creation, upgradation, operation, upkeep and utilisation of BharatNet.

As per the proposal accredited then, the whole value of the challenge was estimated at Rs Rs 29,432 crore, of which the federal government needed to spend Rs 19,041 crore as viability hole funding. A RFP was floated in July 2021 but it surely did not get any response from any firm as most bidders cited the excessive value of the challenge and the uncertainty of revenues.