Goa needs reliable broadband to assist in bridging rural-urban gaps
In the BharatNet rollout, Goa has no active village broadband points, according to a reply by a Union Minister in the Rajya Sabha two days ago. What it means is that the government’s rural broadband project, BharatNet, has not yet resulted in any working internet access points in villages in Goa.
BharatNet is meant to bring high-speed internet to rural areas across India. Village broadband points are physical locations such as panchayat offices, community centres, or Wi-Fi hotspots where villagers can access internet services. Today, internet access is as essential as electricity, with everything from online classes and telemedicine to digital payments and government services depending on it.
In the case of BharatNet, the “last mile” seems to be the real bottleneck. BharatNet mainly brings fibre up to the gram panchayat, but what people actually need is a connection from the panchayat to their homes and shops.
Goa’s small rural market means that there is low commercial incentive for private players. This is the small state paradox. Ironically, the rural-urban gap is less visible than in big states, but this does not mean that some are not disadvantaged.
Goa has been shifting to fibre-to-home projects (such as Har Ghar Fibre) and mobile network expansion. Newer strategies might be overlapping with BharatNet, reducing the urgency to operationalise it. We can learn from states like Kerala, where K-FON, a local fibre optic network, was launched. Free and affordable internet was also offered to poorer families. Karnataka also had good partnerships with ISPs. Goa has actually tried multiple internet connectivity initiatives over the past decade, but the results have been mixed. It has built a good backbone infrastructure, but has weak last-mile delivery.
Goa Broadband Network (GBBN), the early backbone, was a state-level fibre network connecting government offices and institutions. It connected some 414 sites (nearly half of them panchayats), but did not reach households or public users. GWave (GBBN’s internet service) was launched in 2011. In 2024, the state government renegotiated the GBBN contract, stating that finding a new provider would be more expensive. Public Wi-Fi hotspot initiatives (2020–2023 onward) reached some 137 hotspots across all constituencies. It helped tourists and casual users, mostly urban-centric ones, but this has not been reliable for daily use, work or rural households.
The Common Service Centres (CSCs) sought to provide digital access points in villages to access government forms, online services and basic internet. It improved basic digital inclusion and access to government schemes, but this did not offer full broadband access and was often dependent on connectivity quality itself. During the pandemic and even later, the student community, especially in the hinterlands, was affected by poor connectivity. Har Ghar Fibre (2025–ongoing) is now the Goa government’s plan to provide fibre internet to every household. It has started with pilot areas such as Porvorim, Sankhali and Bicholim. It is too early to judge its potential.
Goa has done well in building its core infrastructure (fibre backbone). Yet, it struggles in areas such as last-mile connectivity, execution delays, operational readiness and addressing the rural-urban gap. There is a need to go beyond good infrastructure on paper and address weak delivery on the ground. In Goa, incomes often rely on tourism, fisheries and small businesses that benefit from online visibility and market access. Villages must be made more productive with better access. Reliable broadband can help bridge rural-urban gaps by enabling students to learn, workers to earn and citizens to access welfare schemes.
