India has crossed the milestone of 1 billion telephone connections, says Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad during the launch of four telecom network products manufactured by state-run technology centre C-DOT. Out of the 1 billion connections, 978 million are mobile phone connections. India adds 5-7 million connections every year.
Regarding the internet connections, India has around 300 million. The Ministry has plans to increase this to 500 million in another two years. Under its National Telecom Policy 2012, the Government will ensure reliable and affordable ‘broadband-on-demand’ by 2015 to achieve 175 million connections by 2017. By 2020, the target is to achieve 600 million connections at a minimum download speed of 2Mbps.
At C-DOT, Prasad launched a long distance Wi-Fi system capable of providing 100Mbps broadband speed to users, especially to those living in higher terrains and longer distances. He also launched solar-powered Wi-Fi system that can work in varying input voltages. 100Gbps optical fibre cable and C-DOT Next Gen Network in MTNL network are the other launches at the event.
According to Minister, C-DOT can play a crucial role in making India digitally strong. It can also become a complimentary to ‘Make in India’ target of the country.
