Telecom dept to sell fibre assets built for BharatNet

New Delhi: The department of telecommunications (DoT) plans to monetize fibre assets built by the government under its flagship mission BharatNet through outright sale to private players or by leasing these assets for a 20-year period after a bidding process. This comes against the backdrop of concerns over poor utilization of digital infrastructure that has been created across more than 100,000 gram panchayats in the country.

The telecom commission on Thursday gave an in-principle approval to hand over these assets to private players. DoT will now work on the modalities of execution of this proposal and submit a report to the commission.