Why is rural internet connectivity hard to expand? | Explained
Why rural internet remains hard to expand: sparse villages, high costs, and delayed public schemes like BharatNet and DBN/USOF.
The past few years have seen a major, but not total, reduction in the lack of internet connectivity in rural areas. Why is it hard to make access more universal?
Published - November 10, 2026 09:09 am IST
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The story so far: According to data received by The Hindu under the RTI Act, 2005, the number of villages without 4G access in the last four years has declined by three-fourths, a result of a scheme by BSNL to “saturate” all uncovered villages with 4G access. Meanwhile, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has yet to finish procedures to approve any satellite internet provider, which would theoretically bring the number of such villages down to zero.
A major reason why rural internet is so hard to deploy at scale is the nature of that scale itself: villages are relatively sparse and India is yet to be urbanised to the extent of many industrialised countries. As such, telecom operators and internet service providers have to spend enormous amounts of money to reach an exceedingly small number of users. Building fiber out to villages, and then setting up phone towers there, is prohibitively expensive, if operators are only guided in their economics by the number of users that such efforts eventually reach.
Published - November 10, 2026 09:09 am IST
technology (general) / IT/computer sciences / national government / internet / The Hindu Explains
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