Govt scraps tender for village fibre rollout

The Indian government has cancelled an INR190 billion (USD2.5 billion) tender for extending fibre connectivity to villages across 16 states due to a lack of eligible bidders, the Economic Times writes. The BharatNet programme was greenlit in June last year and would have utilised a public-private partnership model for the rollout, which was expected to cost around INR294 billion in total. The project had been split into nine tenders, and whilst the government had received applications from some firms, the participants had failed to qualify. An unnamed official source told the paper that the government would refloat the tender after taking feedback from the industry.