The Centre and Telangana have signed an agreement to implement the Amended BharatNet Programme across all 12,769 of the state’s gram panchayats, with about three lakh rural homes to get fibre connections. The project will be delivered through the state’s own fibre company, T-Fiber, rather than directly by BSNL. The money is large and the design is sound, but the agreement says nothing public yet about deadlines, and BharatNet’s history is one of missed ones.
India’s long effort to bring high-speed internet to its villages took a concrete step in Telangana on Friday. At Sanchar Bhawan in New Delhi, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and the Telangana government signed an agreement on 6 November to implement the Amended BharatNet Programme (ABP) in the state under what the Centre calls the “state-led model”. According to the Ministry of Communications, the Government of India has approved ₹3,189 crore in financial assistance for the work.
The agreement was signed by five parties:
- Digital Bharat Nidhi (DBN), the DoT fund that pays for rural connectivity, formerly the Universal Service Obligation Fund
- The Government of Telangana
- The Telangana Rural Internet Infrastructure Corporation Ltd (TRIICL), the implementing company
- BSNL
- The Telangana Fibre Grid Corporation Ltd (T-Fiber)
DBN Administrator Shyamal Mishra presided. The officials present included Anudeep Durishetty, Joint Secretary in Telangana’s IT department, and Venu Prasad Panneru of T-Fiber, who is also chief executive of TRIICL.
What will be built
The project covers 12,769 gram panchayats (GPs), every village council in the state, in three parts:
- Phase 1: 1,946 GPs already connected will be converted from a linear to a ring topology.
- Phase 2: 10,787 GPs will be connected under the amended programme.
- New councils: 36 newly formed GPs will be added.
The ministry says about three lakh rural households will receive fibre-to-the-home connections with central subsidy support. It lists e-governance, online education, telemedicine, digital payments and citizen services as the intended uses.
Why a ring matters
The phrase “linear to ring” carries more significance than it appears. In BharatNet’s early phases, many villages were connected in a chain: a fibre runs from a block headquarters to one panchayat, then on to the next, and so on. If the cable is cut anywhere along the chain, by road-widening, a digger or a flood, every village beyond the break loses service.
A ring connects the chain back on itself, so that traffic can flow in either direction. A single cut no longer isolates anyone, because data reroute around the other side of the loop. For services such as telemedicine or a village bank branch, that redundancy is the difference between a network that is merely present and one that can be relied on. Under the amended programme, ring topology is the standard for new work.
The state-led model
Under the original BharatNet design, the network was built and run largely by central public-sector companies, chiefly BSNL. The amended programme, approved by the Union Cabinet on 4 August 2023 with a reported outlay of ₹1,39,579 crore, allows states to implement it through their own special-purpose vehicles, with BSNL as project management agency. DBN’s programme page sets national targets of about 2.64 lakh GPs and 1.5 crore rural home connections.
Telangana is well placed to take this route. T-Fiber was set up as the state’s own BharatNet vehicle and plans fibre services for households, institutions and enterprises across 33 districts, 589 mandals and all 12,769 GPs. Its distinctive feature is that it lays fibre along the right of way and ducting of Mission Bhagiratha, the state’s drinking-water pipeline network. Reusing existing trenches can reduce both cost and the damage to roads that has dogged fibre projects elsewhere. In August 2026, according to Telangana Today, the state directed government offices to take internet services only through T-Fiber from 1 September.
How Telangana compares
Telangana joins other states that have chosen the state-led route:
- Gujarat signed in June 2025, for ₹5,631 crore covering 14,654 GPs, including ten years of operation and maintenance.
- Andhra Pradesh signed a memorandum in February 2026, for ₹2,432 crore covering 13,426 GPs, implemented through APSFL.
- Tamil Nadu signed a BharatNet agreement with DoT and TANFINET on the same day as Telangana.
Direct cost comparisons between states should be treated with caution, because the agreements may differ in what they cover: maintenance periods, existing assets and terrain. NSH could not establish how many states have signed in total.
The caveats
The release leaves several questions unanswered:
- No timeline. It gives no completion date for either phase.
- No funding split. It does not say how the ₹3,189 crore is divided, or whether Telangana adds its own money.
- No service standards. No uptime or speed commitments were published.
- No ministers quoted. No Union or Telangana minister was quoted in the official release or in the wire coverage NSH reviewed.
Those gaps matter because BharatNet, launched in 2011 as the National Optical Fibre Network, has repeatedly missed its targets. Much of the fibre laid in its early phases was found to be idle or poorly maintained, and connecting a panchayat office has often not translated into usable service for households. The three lakh home connections are therefore the figure to watch. Laying the network is only the first step: people use the internet only if connections are affordable, reliable and backed by local service providers.
Why it matters for Telangana
Rural Telangana has much to gain. The state’s health system increasingly relies on teleconsultation, its schools on digital content, and its farmers on online markets, weather advisories and crop-insurance systems that now use satellite data. A resilient village network is the foundation for all of them. It also matters for the state’s broader technology ambitions. A Hyderabad-centred technology economy that leaves its districts poorly connected deepens the urban–rural divide; reliable rural fibre could help spread that activity more widely.
