* Reviews status of BharatNet
Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Sept 12: Flagging the slow pace of progress over saturation of 4G connectivity in Jammu and Kashmir, Chief Secretary, Atal Dulloo, today directed the officers to work in a coordinated manner to expedite the pace of work on the project for its timely completion.
He passed these directions during a review meeting at Civil Secretariat here during which several issues hampering the progress were ironed out.
The meeting was attended by Secretary Public Works (R&B) Department, Secretary Revenue Department and other officers. Principal Secretary, Power Development Department, Secretary Rural Development Department, Additional Secretary IT Department, General Manager, BSNL and others attended the meeting through video conferencing.
While chairing the meeting, Chief Secretary directed the service provider to complete the work on all the handed over sites without any further delay.
“There is no scope for any leniency and things should not be kept lingering around without any justifiable reasons. Pendency should be cleared expeditiously by prioritising uncovered areas”, he said.
The objective of the project is to provide 4G mobile services in uncovered villages in remote and difficult areas.
Regarding the electricity connection to the towers, he asked the Principal Secretary, PDD to speed up the process of providing electric connection to the towers. He said that a mechanism should be developed so that electricity is provided to the towers as soon as they get completed.
He also directed the authorities to identify alternate land where the earlier proposed site was not found feasible as per the quality standards.
During the meeting CGM, BSNL gave a power point presentation on 4G saturation project regarding sites and land allotment details, tower erection and highlighted the challenges which impede 4G saturation project. He said that work is in progress at different stages and is being continuously monitored.
He gave out that they have been allotted land at 711 sites and civil work has started on 563 sites (Jammu-279, Kashmir-284) and tower erection has been completed on 355 sites (Jammu-149, Srinagar -206). He also said that 122 4G sites have been made ON-Air and 200 more sites will be made ON-Air by the end of September 2024 as per the target.
Atal Dulloo also reviewed the progress on BharatNet and directed the officials to expedite the initiative.
He stressed on smooth implementation of BharatNet for providing high speed broadband connectivity to Gram Panchayats across Jammu and Kashmir.
He also called for carrying out a study of all the services to check their utilisation location wise and the uptake by the users.
CGM BSNL gave a presentation about the BharatNet and said that in Jammu and Kashmir a total of 1119 Gram Panchayats have been covered under phase I & II, out of which 427 GPs have been covered on Optical Fiber Cable and 692 covered on VSAT. He said that broadband utilization under BharatNet has shown greater uptake over the past two years with 8502 Fiber to the Home (FTTH) connections provided to the people in rural areas and 427 FTTH to Government institutions.
He also informed that 660 GPs which were having power related issues has been resolved by the Power Development Department in consultation with BSNL and Rural Development Department.
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