BastarNet is a project initiated by Govt. of Chhattisgarh for laying optical fibre backbone network to boost internet and telecom connectivity in the Bastar division, where there is very little penetration of any of telecom provider of India. It will serve as the information highway to bridge the digital divide in the region.
Bastar is a division in southern Chhattisgarh of India, which falls under weakest network connectivity districts in the country for variety of reasons. BastarNet project is an ambitious vision of Chhattisgarh Govt. for creating a digital highway for strengthening mobile and internet connectivity across the Left Wing Extremism (LWE) affected Bastar division of Chhattisgarh to connect the seven districts i.e. Kanker, Kondagaon, Bijapur, Narayanpur, Bastar, Sukma and Dantewada.
Under ‘BastarNet’, an underground Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) backbone of around 836 km in ring topology has been laid in order to boost the communication system in the seven districts of the Bastar division. An IP-MPLS based network has also been deployed for catering to end-to-end service delivery.

http://chips.gov.in/bastar-net

• Chhattisgarh State, India

• Youth
• Women
• Indigenous and nomadic peoples
• The unemployed
• The poor
• Remote and rural communities

As an aggressive initiative by Chhattisgarh state govt. to connect the unconnected region affected by insurgency and difficult terrain, BastarNet can be replicated to provide connectivity to any region with difficult terrain or regional insurgency at a rapid pace.
In a region where open market demand is not enough to pull private players to build network infrastructure, it is of high importance to build a well thought out strategy with respect to business model, customers, vendors, and convergence model for local administration, security forces, citizen, and individual of power.
Being a backbone to all govt and non govt service delivery to citizen and ability to become the platform for education, healthcare, and other basic need. And with the help of IP-MPLS, Optical Fibre network it is possible to provide highly secured, customisable, easily manageable high speed bandwidth to the end user. So BastarNet can be replicated for strategic network building for regions under insurgency or difficult terrain or any places requiring high speed network.

Being a state led project BastarNet is not a for profit project, and even then it is a sustainable initiative from multiple attributes.
1. Revenue generation from leasing of bandwidth to internet service providers, telecom service providers
2. Future expansion to Service delivery model as a ISP or TSP
3. Cost savings in overall governance with the reachability of internet

BastarNet on its first year of operation has already onboarded couple of telecom players on the network and is aggressively onboarding different govt and private service providers. As the region had seen no internet or telecom connectivity before BastarNet happened, and with lack of service providers in the region, CHiPS sees the opportunity to become a service provider itself. Above and beyond this, BastarNet has the opportunity to support all e-governance strategy of government and provide services to departments like Health, Police, Education, thus providing cost saving to the overall governance.

BastarNet project is in alignment with the WSIS values and supports the basic human rights of equality. 1. Decrease of digital divide between tribal rural area of bastar to mainstream 2. Reachability of governance 3. Create opportunity 4. Access to world of information With the availability of cheap and high speed internet into the underdeveloped areas of Bastar region, the population there will have the access to information and knowledge helping into the overall growth of the region. There will be world class Education available for all. Health, Security and other important aspects will be addressed. And most importantly, it will create job/business opportunities for the people, thus helping improve the standard of living. Overall the area will see Growth and the Extremist activities in the area will also subside.