d around those locations. In all, a total of 60 Wi-Fi access points have been deployed in the 10 villages, with six access points per village. These access points are set up at the Gram Panchayat office, primary health care centres, at least one school and one community centre. A total of 106 Mbps bandwidth has been procured to serve the 25 villages.
Figure 1. Network diagram of 25 villages in the Palghar project
Establishing a community-led network
Seeding the growth of a community-led network has been an important achievement of the test bed. An internet needs assessment survey suggested that enabling connectivity was not enough for the villages. There needs to be ownership of the network by the village authorities so that local and regional needs will be prioritised. Community involvement in the connectivity can help in the maintenance of the network and take care of the security of the devices. Local youth from the village community can also be effectively engaged through skills development and training.
Out of the 25 villages covered in the second test bed, community networks were set up in 10 villages only. They were selected for two reasons: i) the location of these villages was in remote pockets and hilly areas, and ii) there was no mobile coverage in these villages. Figure 2 depicts the network diagram of the 10 villages where the community network is currently operational. As seen in the figure, a point-to-point 5.8 GHz link has been set up from the tower at the base station to the Gram Panchayat office. Connectivity is further distributed inside the village in a mesh network through six access points that are placed strategically inside the village. As a result, the entire expanse of the village is Wi-Fi enabled.
Figure 2. Community network villages in Palghar
The network in the 10 villages is maintained through community participation. A village youth is nominated as the Village Level Entrepreneur (VLE) who undergoes training and skill development to maintain and operate the network in the village. The VLE is registered with the government's Common Service Centre (CSC) programme to ensure citizen service centres operate in all Gram Panchayat offices in India. CSC e‑Governance Services India Limited, a special purpose vehicle, has been created by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in order to extend digital services in rural areas. Wi-Fi Choupal was set up alongside this to extend connectivity using Wi-Fi-based network infrastructure.
As an ancillary to the CSC, Wi-Fi Choupal  has partnered with Gram Marg in the 25 villages Palghar project. Wi-Fi Choupal, as an ISP licence holder, uses the VLE to sell bandwidth inside the village through fixed-pricing plans. In these villages the connectivity is currently being used both on smartphones as well as in the village Gram Panchayat office for accessing and enabling e‑governance services.
Sustainable economic partnership model
As mentioned, in order to make the connectivity sustainable, the 4-P model was developed. This partnership model was developed for all the 25 villages in Palghar. The main reason behind developing the partnership model has been to throw light on how different partnerships can facilitate connectivity to remote, rural villages. The model also lays stress on the fact that no single entity (i.e. private telecom operators) or the government is responsible for enabling connectivity to the unserved. Important aspects of the model are: i) the Panchayat (i.e. the village administration) has been introduced into the partnership model alongside the public and private partners, and ii) the partnership model adopts a bottom-up approach with the involvement of the villagers, focusing on the local and regional needs with regard to connectivity. As the Panchayat represents the village administration, and is elected by the people of the village and backed by the district and state government, its participation adds value to the partnership in terms of authority, ownership and financial disbursement. 
The role of each of the partners 