If minister of state for communications and IT, Sachin Pilot, is to be believed, India will be a fully wired country pretty soon. The minister says that the Rs.17,000 crore ($3.5 billion) in the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) will be utilised to connect 626,000 villages. He says that it would entail setting up 11,000 communications towers, and that state-run BSNL will be entrusted with this mammoth task. Sounds good so far.
But with no firm dates announced we have to wait for Pilot’s “news on this very soon.”