Department of Telecommunication’s highest policy making body, Telecom Commission, has approved 6,000 Cr plan to set up 12.5 lakh public Wi-Fi hotspots on last week. Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) will be funding the project. Being a part of government's ambitious project BharatNet, this project is aimed to offer WiFi hotspots in rural areas at all developmental institutions, police stations, schools, community health centers and post offices across all 2.5 lakh gram panchayats across the country. A senior official from the DoT confirmed that tender for this project will be announced soon and the planned WiFi hotspots are expected to be installed by this December. Telecom Commission also approved additional funding for a pilot projects under this scheme to connect all the districts through alternative technologies. The service providers will be given Rs 10 crore to promote this new technology usage. As per the upcoming new telecom policy, this project is targeted to provide 1 gbps connectivity by 2020 and 10 gbps by 2022 to all gram panchayats. It is also expected that the project will enable 100 mbps broadband on demand to key development institutions with deploying WiFi hotspots. First phase of BharatNet project is to connect 100,000 gram panchayats which has already been completed. Now the work for second phase aiming to connect 150,000 gram panchayats is going on which is expected to get completed by March next year.