BharatNet and FTTH Rollout – Planning the Fibre Route Survey

Updated: 23 October 2026

What is BharatNet?

BharatNet is the Government of India programme that takes optical fibre broadband to the gram panchayats of rural India. It began life as the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) and is executed through Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL), a special purpose vehicle incorporated in 2012, with money from the Digital Bharat Nidhi – the fund that replaced the Universal Service Obligation Fund.

The idea is straightforward. Once a panchayat has fibre, operators, government offices, schools and local entrepreneurs can draw broadband from it, including connections into homes. The work is anything but straightforward: it means laying and maintaining fibre along a vast length of village and small-town roads, much of it underground.

How has BharatNet been rolled out, phase by phase?

Phase I

The first phase connected about one lakh gram panchayats, largely by reusing existing fibre infrastructure, and was completed in December 2017.

Phase II

The second phase set out to reach roughly 1.5 lakh more panchayats with a mix of optical fibre, radio and satellite links, chosen by terrain.

Amended BharatNet Programme

In August 2023 the Union Cabinet approved the Amended BharatNet Programme with an outlay of ₹1,39,579 crore. Commonly called BharatNet Phase 3 in the industry, it targets optical fibre to 2.64 lakh gram panchayats in a ring topology, with BSNL as the single project management agency for operation and maintenance. By 19 March 2025, 2,18,347 panchayats had been made service-ready, according to PIB.

The shift to rings matters for anyone surveying routes. In a linear network one cut isolates every panchayat beyond it; in a ring, traffic can flow the other way round. Closing those rings means new links between panchayats, often beside roads where earlier fibre already lies.

What is FTTH, and how does fibre to the home work?

FTTH, or fibre to the home, runs optical fibre right into a house, shop or office instead of stopping at a street cabinet or tower. Most Indian FTTH networks use a passive optical network (PON):

• OLT – the optical line terminal at the exchange or point of presence, which lights the fibre.
• Feeder fibre – the cable from the OLT out to the neighbourhood.
• Splitter – an unpowered device dividing one fibre among many users, at ratios such as 1:8 or 1:32.
• Distribution and drop – smaller cables to the street, then single drop fibres into each premises.
• ONT – the terminal inside the home that turns light into Ethernet and Wi-Fi.

BharatNet and FTTH meet at the panchayat: the programme brings fibre to the village, and FTTH spreads it to households. PIB reported in April 2025 that 12,21,014 FTTH connections had been commissioned on BharatNet.

Which terms appear in BharatNet and FTTH tenders?

• Gram panchayat (GP) – the village-level local body and the basic unit BharatNet connects.
• Block – the administrative level above the GP, where network nodes are commonly placed.
• Ring topology – a network built as a closed loop so service survives a single cut.
• Service-ready GP – a panchayat where equipment is installed and connectivity can be offered.
• Route km – the length of the path along which fibre runs, as distinct from total fibre km.
• RoW – right of way permission from the road or land owner for the route.
• Splitter ratio – how many users share one feeder fibre in a PON.

How are rural fibre routes planned along roads?

Rural fibre almost always follows roads: highways between blocks, district roads to larger villages, and village roads to the panchayat itself. A sound rural fibre route survey and plan weighs these points:

• Road ownership – successive stretches may belong to different authorities, each with its own permission and conditions.
• Widening plans – a duct on the shoulder of a road due for widening may end up under new carriageway within a couple of years.
• Crossings – culverts, canals, irrigation channels, nalas and level crossings, each needing a bore or a special detail.
• Village approaches – narrow lanes where drains, water pipes and house connections crowd every metre.
• Existing fibre – earlier BharatNet, BSNL and private operator ducts along the same road, which must be found rather than hit.
• Maintenance access – chambers sited where a repair crew can reach them in every season.

Why does a BharatNet route need a GPR survey first?

It is tempting to assume rural roads are empty below the surface. Many are not. Drinking-water pipelines, mostly plastic, have reached villages across the country in recent years. Older telecom cables and ducts follow many district roads. Power cables cluster near substations and towns, and city gas networks are spreading into peri-urban areas. Few of these appear on the drawings a fibre contractor is handed.

Ground penetrating radar picks up plastic and metal services alike, and a survey run before trenching marks them on the ground and records their approximate depth. For ring-closure links that run beside an existing BharatNet route, it also locates the live duct, so the new trench does not cut the very fibre the ring is meant to protect. At canal and culvert crossings the scan hands the HDD crew a clear bore path.

FTTH inside towns raises a tighter version of the same problem. Distribution and drop cables follow narrow lanes and colony roads already crowded with water connections, sewers, LT cables and other operators' ducts, many of them only a short depth below the surface. Scanning each lane before a colony build lets the crew pick a clear strip, and avoids cutting a neighbour's service on the first day of work.

Mezux offers this as an OFC route GPR survey, with crews and radar systems mobilising from Faridabad. Our own fibre work includes operator corridors such as the 135 km Bawana Industrial Area route in Delhi.

What records should rural fibre routes keep?

Rural routes are long, and the people maintaining them are seldom the people who built them, so records must make sense to a stranger:

• chamber and marker positions tied to GPS coordinates, not to trees or shopfronts;
• duct depth and road side for every section;
• the pre-laying survey, listing water pipes and other services crossed;
• crossing details with bore depths;
• OTDR traces and splice records for each link in the ring.

Programme-level context is in our piece on the India fibre backbone rollout, and the utility mapping page for telecom operators explains how survey data supports network records. To get a rural route surveyed, send its KML and length through the quote form below.