The company's rural drive will comprise three initiatives: BharatNet Plan, GrameenVAS and M2M (Machine to Machine) solutions.

The BharatNet Plan, a high-speed wireless Internet service, will cover over 20,000 rural locations, and is RCom's strategy to drive rural Internet penetration.

BharatNet will be offered at Rs.98 a week. 'Driving Internet penetration across the country beyond major cities is a key priority for us,' said Prasad.

GrameenVAS will offer value-added services (VAS) to cater to specific needs of rural mobile phone users. Services will include providing market rates, agriculture and animal husbandry updates and weather forecast in multiple Indian languages.

M2M applications will aid automation of agro- and irrigation services, water level monitoring, data gathering for milk and agri-cooperatives, fisheries, poultry, and soil analysis.