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New Delhi, July 13 The Government’s rural telephony project under the Bharat Nirman programme is set to achieve its targets two years ahead of schedule. The Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, chaired a meeting on Thursday to review the progress of the project.

“It was noted the performance of extending telephony to the rural areas was progressing extremely well with the Bharat Nirman target of providing every village with telephone connectivity likely to be achieved by November 2007 – about two years ahead of schedule. Out of the 66,822 villages, 48,125 have been covered till May 2007 and the remaining will be covered by November 2007,” said an official press release. When completed, 14,183 villages would be connected through satellite technology the rest through other technologies. About 80,000 towers will be installed by May 2008 to facilitate mobile and other wireless services in rural areas.

“Efforts are also on to provide broadband services to cover 2 lakh villages in 5000 blocks across the country. The final goal is to create five crore rural connections by 2007 and increase this to 8 crore connections by 2010 and provide broadband connections in every village by 2012,” said the release.

The Department of Telecom had recently floated a project under the Universal Services Obligation fund to cover over 2 lakh villages with mobile phone network. The second phase of this project, which will provide coverage to 100 per cent of the country’s geographical area is also under way.

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