BharatNet has been called the world's largest rural broadband programme, yet last-mile utilisation remains uneven. Examine how the Amended BharatNet Program seeks to address the design and O&M weaknesses of earlier phases.

BharatNet began as NOFN in 2011. Most Gram Panchayats (GPs) are now "service-ready", yet the CAG found only 33.2% of service-ready GPs actually working in November 2025 [1]. The Amended BharatNet Program (ABP) (August 2023; ₹1,39,579 crore) seeks to close this gap between access and use [2].

Weaknesses of earlier phases

• Linear design: a single fibre cut isolates a GP. Cuts cause ~48% of downtime, and repairs take 17 days on average [1].
• Power failures: 64.29% of all fault tickets [1].
• Fragmented O&M: BBNL, BSNL, RailTel, PGCIL, CSC and State agencies shared the work, so no single body owned failures. Working GPs fell from 59.63% (2021) to 27.22% (2023) after the CSC O&M contract ended [1].
• Under-utilisation: only 17.91% of bandwidth was used [1], and just 766 of one lakh GP Wi-Fi hotspots were active [4].

How ABP responds

• Design: Block-to-GP ring topology gives a redundant path [2]. For example, Maharashtra's 15,171 Phase-I GPs are being upgraded from linear to ring [3].
• Technology: IP-MPLS routers, power backup and a Remote Fibre Monitoring System for faster fault detection [2].
• O&M accountability: BSNL is the single Project Management Agency, with 10-year O&M built in [2].
• Cooperative federalism: under the State-led model, Digital Bharat Nidhi funds and State SPVs execute (e.g. MDIL, ₹10,520 crore for Maharashtra) [3].
• Demand side: connectivity reaches villages on demand [2], and the BharatNet Udyami model uses local entrepreneurs for FTTH on revenue-sharing [1].

Residual gaps

• The BSNL-dominated CPSU-led model averaged just 11.84% availability [1].
• Maharashtra already used a ring in Phase II, yet its availability stayed near zero [1]. A better design alone does not deliver uptime.
• 2025-26 spending was 75% below budget [4], so the bottleneck is the capacity to spend, not the allocation.

ABP shifts BharatNet from laying cable to running a network. Its success depends on copying what worked in Gujarat and Punjab, the only States above 95% uptime: independent power, "Call Before You Dig", uptime-linked payments and integrated Central–State NOCs [1]. If progress is measured in working, paying connections, ABP can make Digital India's promise of meaningful rural connectivity real, in line with SDG 9.c.