The increase in ICT enabled applications for facilitating Government-Government communication has mandated the need for connectivity. To facilitate, the Department of Information Technology, Government of Kerala has initiated a project to provide Broadband connectivity to Government offices in rural areas. The Department of Information Technology seeks to achieve Broadband Internet Connectivity [using Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Loop (ADSL)] under USO Scheme in the State Government Offices through BSNL’s Rural Exchanges in Kerala.

The Universal Service Obligation of the Department of Tele-Communications, Government of India envisages a five-phase strategy to provide broadband connectivity to all villages in India. BSNL will cover about a tenth of the project, around 60,000 villages under this scheme. With this, DoT aims to have 20 million broadband connections by 2010. As part of this, BSNL shall connect Government offices, community centres, health centres, Panchayats and police stations under its rural exchanges in the blocks at subsidized rates, under two plans as below:

USO PLAN 99 : Rs.99/- p.m., 400MB data download
USO PLAN 150 : Rs.150/- p.m., 1GB data download
Bandwidth : 512kbps
Additional Data download : 40 paise per MB

State Government Offices located under the rural exchanges in Kerala have been advised to take advantage of this Scheme by subscribing to connections prescribed for “Rural Broadband Connectivity for Govt.Offices under USO Scheme in Kerala”. Upto 26,190 Government Offices may benefit from the scheme. In case the number of Government Offices subscribing to the scheme does not reach desired levels, the Scheme may be transferred to other agencies related to education, citizen service centre etc.

The subscriptions will be provided at a subsidized cost for Government Offices at 873 exchanges listed below, against submission of request in prescribed application form of BSNL, available for download at http://bsnl.co.in/forms/broadband.pdf

Click here to view list of BSNL Exchanges under USO Scheme in KERALA

CONTACTS

Kerala State IT Mission : Rajeevan Chaladan, Mission Co-ordinator