The government will provide internet connectivity to all government high schools, public health centres and gram panchayats by the year 2012, under its rural broadband connectivity programme, IT and communications minister A Raja has said.

Inaugurating a national round table conference on the role of telecom sector in education development in New Delhi, Raja said the department of telecom is making extensive use of its Universal Service Organisation (USO) funds to increase broadband connectivity at each block and village level.

He said the government will provide broadband-ready devices in bundled schemes, which will include personal computers and broadband connection, at affordable prices.

''The Universal Service Organisation (USO) Fund is being extensively deployed on a large scale to increase the broadband connectivity in rural area. We are making continuous efforts and committed to extend communication facilities with broadband connectivity at each block and village level. Once these facilities are in place, the broadband connectivity will be available on demand,'' said Raja.

He said the government also plans to provide content tools like free fonts for all the major Indian languages to extent the reach of broadband to the common man and the rural household.

He said the impact of the current global economic recession would also be comparatively less on Indian telecom sector if we could utilise its inherent strength and increase the pace of growth of the sector.

Raja said the country is set to surpass the set target of 500 million telephone connections by 2010, although telecom sector growth in rural areas has not kept pace with that in urban areas.

The national round table was jointly organised by the Communication and Manufacturing Association of India (CMAI) and the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) to devise strategies to take forward open and distance learning using telecom infrastructure and facilities. Besides IGNOU, the heads of several universities and educational institutions and major telecom companies attended the meeting.