BharatNet Pact Links 4,767 Tamil Nadu Villages on Demand

Rural broadband in Tamil Nadu received a fresh push on 30 October 2026, when three parties put their signatures to a utilisation agreement at Sanchar Bhawan in New Delhi. The signatories were Digital Bharat Nidhi (DBN), which works under the Department of Telecommunications, the Government of Tamil Nadu, and the Tamil Nadu FibreNet Corporation (TANFINET).

What the agreement does

The deal lets the state tap the fibre backbone already laid, under the Amended BharatNet Programme (ABP), and it takes the state-led route rather than a centrally run one. Central subsidy has been cleared, and the money is meant to carry fibre into homes rather than stop at the panchayat office.

• More than five lakh rural households in the state are expected to get home fibre links with help from the Union government.
• A further 4,767 villages are to be hooked up whenever they ask for a line, which is how the remaining last-mile gaps are to be closed.
• Services expected to ride on the pipe include e-governance, classes delivered online, telemedicine, digital payments and other citizen-facing services.

Who signed and who watched

Shyamal Misra, Administrator of Digital Bharat Nidhi, presided over the ceremony. Atul Anand, Additional Chief Secretary for artificial intelligence, information technology and digital services in Tamil Nadu, joined over a video link. Also present were Papa Sudhakara Rao, Director (Enterprise Business) at Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, V. Vallidevi, General Manager (Projects) at TANFINET, and Dinesh Kumar Garg, Deputy Director General for ABP implementation in the telecom department, besides senior officers of the department, the fund and BSNL.

The scheme behind it

The Union Cabinet cleared the Amended BharatNet Programme on 4 August 2023. Its brief is to upgrade, consolidate and widen the network already in the ground, so that every gram panchayat, and on request every village, gets broadband built to last.

DBN itself is the renamed Universal Service Obligation Fund. The fund was set up under the Indian Telegraph (Amendment) Act of 2003, and the Telecommunications Act of 2023 gave it the present name. An attached office of the telecom department under the Ministry of Communications, it also bankrolls the 4G saturation drive and mobile coverage in uncovered parts of aspirational districts, Left Wing Extremism affected areas, Himalayan and border belts, islands and the North East. The agreement is expected to speed up work on the programme in the state.