Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), India, is planning to provide broadband connections to 110,000 schools in the country. The company will offer both wireless and wired broadband connectivity to schools.

BSNL has signed an agreement with the Ministry of Human Research and Development to provide this service in the education sector. In the first phase of the project, the company will provide connectivity to 15,000 schools in 1,500 towns and it would be completed in December, 2007. In the second phase, BSNL will cover, 20,000 schools in rural areas. In the last phase, he remaining 65,000 schools across 5,000 blocks will be covered.

In the 11th Plan, the states will have to spend more on Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA).

The funding pattern has now become 50:50 between the states and Centre. For the last five years, ever since its inception, the funding pattern was 75:25 where the Centre paid 75 percent and the states 25 percent of the entire year's budget on elementary education. The situation is particularly bad for the northeastern states, which used to get preferential treatment and had 90:10 funding pattern. But the state governments want to continue with the ratio of 75:25. The states had already expressed their inability to spending more on SSA. Whether the new funding pattern will derail the elementary education is a matter that has to be taken seriously. It has also to be remembered that that providing Universal Primary Education is one of the Millennium Development Goals