Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad predicts the number of internet users in India will rise to 50 crore over the course of the next 5 to 8 months. The figure currently stands at 40 crore. There are presently over 100 crore handset owners in the country, out of an overall population of 125 crore.
Prasad thinks 70% of the 50 crore internet users will go online via their phones. He also claims nearly 20 to 35 lakh mobile adopters are added every month. The Minister had earlier announced the government’s plan to set up 2500 Wi-Fi hotspots across 256 areas in order to bolster its chances of achieving the target.
BSNL has so far been able to set up over 500 Wi-Fi spots in 200 regions under the program which falls under the purview of the Prime Minister’s Digital India initiative. A report last week had suggested that the PMO is thinking of providing free data packs to first-time internet users, similar in execution to the current LPG subsidy.
A meeting was apparently held between Prasad, Jitendra Singh and Harsh Vardhan on January 15 to discuss the issue. The new scheme was first put forward in TRAI’s net neutrality consultation report. It can be seen as a countermeasure to Facebook’s Free Basics whose goal is to encourage individuals to go online by giving away access to a few sites for free.
Also Read: Govt to install 2500 Wi-Fi hotspots by next fiscal, says Prasad
As per PTI, the Telecom Minister also spoke about the 95 crore Aadhar card holders in the nation and the government’s attempts to connect 2.5 lakh gram panchayats with the help of an optical fiber network. The initiative, dubbed BharatNet, has been in place since 2011 but has made slow progress so far.
TRAI had proposed a new model for handling the project in a consultation paper back in November. The Build-Own-Operate-Transfer (BOOT) system which it presented sees a private company dealing with design and construction of infrastructure in the initial stage. After a set period of time, ownership is transferred to the administration.