New Delhi: Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday proposed linking 100,000 gram panchayats with fibre-to-home internet connectivity in 2020-21 through telecom infrastructure provider BharatNet.

The finance minister in her budget speech, proposed to allocate ₹6,000 crore for the expansion of BharatNet, a move that according to industry experts will boost regional language content streaming, audio and video, in India’s small towns.

Nachiket Pantvaidya, chief executive officer at ALTBalaji and Group COO, Balaji Telefilms said the move will place rural India on the digital map.

Vishnu Mohta, co-founder of Bengali language entertainment video streaming platform Hoichoi, said “We rely heavily on Internet connectivity (as a business) and penetration is an important aspect of our growth. A large base of our audience comes from tier-two and three towns where people are not ordinarily English or Hindi language speakers and this is a welcome move that would enable us to go much deeper, beyond the metros.”

To be sure, a whole generation of young millennials is …Click here to read the full story