NEW DELHI, Dec 12, 2022 (BSS) - India has emerged as the largest 'connected' nation in the world with more than 800 million broadband users, its State Minister for Electronics & Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said.
"We are the largest 'connected' nation in the world with 800 million Indian users," he told the concluding ceremony of the India Internet Governance Forum 2022 here on Sunday.
Giving details, he said 5G and the largest rural broadband connectivity network project at BharatNet will have 1.2 billion Indian users constituting the single largest presence of the global internet.
Chandrasekhar also said that India expects further technological innovations as well as updated regulatory policies to remain relevant with involvement by all stakeholders.
He said that India now has a tremendous powerful offering, identity authentication to a very diverse and rich suite of applications, and improved accessibility to the internet to countries in the Global South which have not been able to step up and create the same sort of pace of digitization of their economy.
During the G20 Presidency, he said PM Narendra Modi declared that he will be open to India offering that platform to all those nations in the Global South that want to transform their digital economy and their governance model as India.
Speaking on the occasion, Secretary to the Ministry Alkesh Kumar Sharma said that the Digital India program augments India's mission with digital literacy initiative skills side by side an exemplary indigenous success story, which has become a world story with technical progress shaping new India.
He added that India is looking at the major initiative of connecting the unconnected ones with best internet connectivity.
"India is also looking at building laws which ensure the privacy, protection, data, security and safety of our citizens. We are also looking at how to create a trillion-dollar digital economy in the next three years," he added.
The India Internet Government Forum is an initiative associated with the UN Internet Governance Forum (UN-IGF).
