India to roll out high-speed Internet to 10,000 villages in 2013

India will connect 10,000 villages to high-speed broadband by the end of the year. 

The Bharat Broadband Network (BBNL), the company which has the mandate to rollout broadband network, will oversee the rollout of a 100Mbps fibre broadband network that will reach 250,000 villages across India, known as gram panchayats, according to a report in The Hindu on Wednesday.

BBNL--a joint venture between the state-owned telco BSNL, Rail Tel and Power Grid Corporation of India--aims to connect another 100,000 by end-2014.

The network will have sufficient redundancy to survive multiple blackouts and a "ring architecture is also being considered" to provide multiple backup points, an official said. "If a cable connecting to a village gets disconnected, other cables in the vicinity will help the village office remain online," the official said.

BBNL and the National Information Centre have embarked on a cartography exercise of Indian villages, and network rollout maps will be available online soon. The government has already spent US$38.1 million (2.2 billion rupees) on the project. The tender process is expected be finalized by July 31.