Free broadband to all Indians?

The government of India is considering a radical scheme under which it will provide free broadband and landline phone service to all Indians, paid for by billions of dollars in telecom taxes now just sitting idle in the bank.
The free broadband would be at 2 Mb/s.
In India, as elsewhere around the world, the phone companies have been reporting declining numbers of landline subscribers. The free service could start rolling out as quickly as 2009. Government owned Indian phone companies Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) would provide the free service. Those two companies already provide the vast majority of all of Indian broadband. By the end of this year they are expected to account for 7 million out of 9 million DSL lines in the country, according to Indian government plans, which call for a massive xDSL rollout this year. There were only 2.3 million CSL lines in the country at the end of last year, of which BSNL accounted for almost half.
With landline service - for those who still want it - and broadband free, India's phone companies would be expected to look to various unspecified value-added services for their revenue, according to the government plan. "The move holds the potential to kill the telecom business as we know it," said the Indiatimes.
Funding the plan, and paying for a nationwide fiber optic network to be built and run by Department of Telecom (DoT), will be India's Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) into which all telecom operators in India cough up 5 percent of their annual revenues. Estimates are that as of the end of March the USOF stood at over $2.2 billion, of which only part would be needed to pay for the plan.