Chandigarh, Dec 11 (IANS): The Punjab government Thursday announced that all villages in the state would be provided high speed internet connectivity having unlimited bandwidth.

"The Punjab government has initiated a prestigious project to connect all villages with optical fibre network. A pilot project will connect 6,000 villages with optical fibre network in the first phase," a spokesman of governance reforms department said here.

A tripartite MOU had been signed between Punjab, the union government and Bharat Broadband Network Ltd (BBNL) to transform the villages into e-villages under this project, the spokesman said.

So far, the network is available in all districts and headquarters and this would be extended to other uncovered areas and rural areas.

"After accomplishment of this project, availability of all citizen centric services through rural and urban Sewa Kendras would be within reach of every inhabitant of the state. Besides other communication services, villagers could also avail IPTV having HDTV and range of voice telephony services, video conferencing, video calls etc through this network," he said.

Punjab has over 12,000 villages.