Telecom equipment provider, HFCL on Wednesday said it has been awarded a contract amounting to around ₹2,666.09 crore by Rail Vikas Nigam (RVNL), for BharatNet Phase-III project in the Uttar Pradesh (West) Telecom Circle.

The project includes supply, installation and commissioning of telecom equipment, creation of an Optical Fiber Cable (OFC) network, and maintenance of the network for 10 years, HFCL said in a regulatory filing.

The contract comprises capex of around ₹1,192.82 crore and Opex of around ₹1,473.27 crore, it said adding that HFCL will execute the project over two years, followed by 10 years of operations & maintenance (O&M), including a one-year warranty period.

“This contract is in addition to the earlier contract of ₹2,167.65 crore awarded to the company by RVNL for BharatNet Phase-III projects in the Uttar Pradesh (East) and Uttar Pradesh (West) Telecom Circles which was intimated to the stock exchanges on January 23, 2025,” HFCL said.

The company continues to strengthen its position in the telecom network domain and remains committed to delivering high-quality execution of large-scale digital connectivity projects, it added.

BharatNet is one of the biggest rural telecom projects in the world, implemented in a phased manner to more than 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayats (GPs) in the country for providing non-discriminatory access to broadband connectivity to all the telecom service providers.

As of February this year, the government has made 2.14 lakh GPs already service-ready in phases I and II with an investment of around ₹42,000 crore.

The objective of BharatNet is to enable access providers like mobile operators, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Cable TV operators, content providers to launch various services such as applications like e-health, e-education and e-governance in rural and remote India.

The project is being executed by a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) namely Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL).

Published on June 17, 2026