Rural subscribers will get this offer (broadband and PC) for Rs 399 a month, once they pay Rs 2,250 as upfront fee. The Department of Telecom (DOT) will give a subsidy of Rs 4,500 per connection to BSNL India from its Universal Services Obligation Fund. according to the report.

There are over 27,789 rural and remote BSNL telephone exchanges which will come under the scheme.

Kuldeep Goyal, CMD at BSNL said:

“This is indeed the one of the major initiatives to bridge the digital divide by offering PC + Broadband at a subsidised rates to our customers. We are delighted to partner with HCL Infosystems for this nation wide programme. The missing pie in PC and broadband proliferation was the affordability and service which are now being provided jointly by us and HCL, with support from USOF to increase desirability.”

The scheme would cost around Rs 1,500 crore the BSNL broadband users in rural areas will get free HCL service from its repair centres.

Ajai Chowdhry, chairman and CEO, HCL said:

“Today, the need to create a progressive environment of growth is more than ever before. Indian economy, in the past few years, has grown but the growth can be accelerated and made more inclusive by providing an impetus to PC and broadband penetration in rural India. This project for BSNL is in line with our strategy for mass adoption of PC + broadband to promote India’s GDP growth”

Total number of 2G connections  – 49,088,514 
 
Total number of 3G connections – 10, 745 
 
District Headquarters covered – 618(All covered)
 
Total number of villages covered  – 3,21,97
 
Total number of Town/cities covered  – 21,953
 
National Highway covered (Km)  – 56,302(out of 60,519)
 
State Highway covered (Km) – 77,665(out of 1,240,77)
 
Railway route covered (Km) – 43,779(outof 54,

Rural USOF 99 comes with up to 2Mbps speed and 400 MB monthly download limit and will cost Rs. 99 per month.

Rural USOF 150 provides 2Mbps speed and 1GB download per month and will cost Rs.150 per month.

Subscribers can get these broadband plans without additional costs -  free registration, no security Deposit and free  Installation.

Chennai Telephone says there will be more than half of landline connections in Chennai will be connected by broadband by mid-2010.

The Hindu reports Chennai Telephones Chief General Manager M. P. Velusamy as saying that Chennai BSNL division has made 7,000 new DataOne broadband additions during August and another 8,000 new broadband connections would be added by the month-end.

There were 3000 new landline connections in Chennai metro during this month. Report says, broadband needs helped BSNL to make new landline connections.  BSNL broadband service has grown at 59% during the year, according to the financial report.

BSNL broadband India uses ADSL or Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line broadband technology which allows the same wire to bring broadband and phone services to homes.

Accoridng to the report, there is complete BSNL broadband outage in Darjeeling and Kalimpong for the last two days.

Economic Times reports S K Samanta, GM, BSNL India as saying:

“I cannot do anything to reconnect broadband connections unless pending bills are cleared,”

However, GJM, is more firm in its campaign against the government which it accuses for using the broadband outage to stop their struggle.

Harka Bahadur Chhetri, the GJM press and publicity secretary said:

“We know that disconnecting broadband lines in the Hills is a tactic to derail our movement. But we will not lie back, and will take strong measures,” said Harka

GJM also asked people of this hills region not to pay their electricity bills from April last year.

BSNL broadband internet service currenlty offers maximum 8Mbps to its customers in major cities. The new service will offer twice this speed and will help broadcasting HDTV which requires higher bandwidth than the normal 8Mb.

It seems BSNL broadband  is working out the price for the new 16Mb broadband offer. Presently, BSNL Kolkata has 2.2 lakha broadband connections in the city. The new service will help BSNL broadband India to offer better service and  compete  well with other rivals like airtel, tata broadband and reliance broadband.

SK Chakravarty, BSNL chief general manager at Calcutta circle said:

“We expect to have the VDSL network across Kolkata before the festive season. This will help us to offer hi-speed internet connectivity as the broadband highway can handle speed up to 26 Mbps. The service will be offered to both consumers as well as enterprises,”

Alok Singh, CEO of Novatium Solutions said:

“We have already rolled out the PC across 16 circles of BSNL and we expect to complete the nationwide roll out by September . We are also undertaking trials with MTNL and expect to start commercial roll out in Mumbai and Delhi by November. Currently , we have a subscriber base of 4,000 machines across India,”