Aiming at facilitating digital services in remote areas, RailTel and CSC e-Governance Services India Limited have signed an MoU to leverage each other's strength for increasing broadband penetration in rural/semi urban areas for bridging the digital divide.

With RailTel being one of the largest neutral telecom services and information and communication technology (ICT) solution providers having pan India presence, e-Governance Services India Limited is enabling rural population with a host of e-governance services for digital inclusion.

CSC e-Governance Services India Limited is a special purpose vehicle (SPV) under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).

The key stakeholders of the CSC scheme are the village level entrepreneur (VLE). The VLEs actively provide various online public utility, financial services and quality healthcare, apart from boosting entrepreneurship/employment in villages and smaller towns across the country.

RailTel has already set up about 200 RailWire Saathi kiosks at rural/semi urban railway stations which will now be operated by VLEs of CSC. This will ‘e-enable’ citizens by providing various digital services and will also create awareness about RailWire services in rural areas.

RailTel also has 6070 PoPs (Point of Presence) on its network out of which 5,000 are in rural areas. Utilising these rural PoPs RailTel, in partnership with CSC, will deliver broadband services to rural areas.

CSC has a base of 4.3 lakh village level entrepreneurs which are based in rural areas. RailTel plans to leverage the complementary strength of CSC to broaden its broadband users.