The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has urged the state governments to eliminate the right-of-way (RoW) charges for the National Fibre Optic Network (NOFN) project to accelerate its execution. Currently, some state governments have been levying high RoW charges which increase the overall cost of the project. DoT is of the view that the state governments will also use the broadband network infrastructure to launch various government services, and therefore must contribute to the project by not levying RoW charges.

The NOFN project aims at providing broadband connectivity to rural areas, which will facilitate provision of delivery of community based e-services under the Digital India initiative. The project plans to connect 250,000 gram panchayats with broadband network by June 2016.