Hughes India to connect 5,000 gram panchayats to the internet with satellite broadband under Bharatnet

Hughes Communications announced its selection by Bharat Broadband Nigam Limited (BBNL) and Telecommunications Consultants India Ltd.(TCIL) to provide high-speed satellite connectivity to 5,000 remote gram panchayats.

Hughes India will enable Internet service for each gram panchayat using capacity from ISRO’s GSAT-19 and GSAT-11 satellites with the Hughes JUPITER System, the de facto standard for satellite broadband implementations, in use on more than 40 satellites worldwide.

The awards are part of the government’s flagship BharatNet Programme to provide broadband connectivity to all 250,000-gram panchayats throughout India.

Commenting on the development, Sarvesh Singh, CMD, BBNL, said: “BharatNet is the backbone of Digital India, being created to achieve the objectives of Hon’ Prime Minister’s Digital India Mission.

The BharatNet network being created by BBNL is to provide affordable high-speed broadband access to rural citizens and institutions of all the Gram Panchayats of the country We are very happy to be partnering with TCIL and Hughes to leverage satellite broadband to connect gram panchayats that are remote or located in difficult terrain.”

Partho Banerjee, President & Managing Director, Hughes India, said: “The project will cover the 5,000-gram panchayats distributed across over 15 states and Union territories.

These include the hilly states in North and North-East India, the heavily forested states like Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, and island territories like Andaman & Nicobar and Lakshadweep Islands.

Among the north-eastern states, the project will cover areas across Manipur, Meghalaya, Tripura, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, and the Galwan Valley in Eastern Ladakh—places that lack terrestrial connectivity, such as fiber or cable.”

The 5,000-gram panchayats are located in northeastern states, including Manipur, Meghalaya, Tripura, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, and the Galwan Valley in Eastern Ladakh—places that lack terrestrial connectivity, such as fiber or cable.

With the Bharatnet project, the Government of India aims to better facilitate e-governance applications like telemedicine (e sanjeevani), access to land records, treasury, police stations, internet access, and many other services in rural India.

Hughes India will provide JUPITER System gateways, solar-powered user terminals, and network operations, install the equipment at each site, and manage the service to deliver speeds up to 10 Mbps.