India pledges to bring high-speed affordable internet access to 150,000 villages

Taking cue from Silicon Valley giants, the Indian government today ramped up its efforts to bring more of its citizens online.

India plans to bring affordable high-speed broadband connection to 150,000 villages in a year, finance minister Arun Jaitley said today as he unveiled the annual budget for the country.

Narendra Modi’s government has been aggressively working on getting internet connectivity to rural areas since assuming power in 2014. 

Jaitley said the government is upping its budget to Rs 100 billion ($1.4 billion) for this effort, adding that it has already laid 155,000km long optical fibre cable across the country. Read more...