The government proposes to offer free, high-speed broadband connectivity to all Indians by 2009, through state-owned telecom service providers BSNL and MTNL. The central government plans to achieve free broadband connectivity at a speed of 2 mbps across the country.

Senior government officials expect to achieve this goal by spending a fraction of the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF), where all telecom operators contribute 5% of their revenues every year.

The Department of Telecom (DoT) will be taking a series of steps towards this initiative. These include using the USOF to set up an optic cable network across the country and opening up the long-distance sectors to further competition, allowing free and fair access to cable landing stations, permitting the resale of bandwidth, setting up web hosting facilities within the country and asking all internet service providers to connect to the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI).