Satellite Communications Key to Driving India’s Technology Ambitions, Internet Reach, MoS IT Says

The Satellite communication and space segment in future will be playing instrumental roles in ensuring India fulfils its ambition of connecting the maximum number of people to the digital economy as well as expanding Internet reach to the last mile, says Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the Minister of State for Information Technology. Chandrasekhar made the comments while speaking at the Indian Space Congress 2022 held in New Delhi recently.

Chandrasekhar said, “Our goal is to have 1.2 billion Indians connect to the internet directly through their device by 2025-26 and it will be a combination of all of this (wireless) and the role of satellite communication and the space segment is an inherent part of it,”.

While admitting the limitations that wireless technology may have at certain times or geographical locations and he further added, “satellite is clearly emerging as an important part of the blueprint of delivering quality Internet to all citizens and enterprises of India.”

According to the minister, the two segment of technology that holds the utmost significance in the coming decade or so will be satellites and space. These will be important for the overall success of any outreach plan that any government can make.

“Space and the satellite communication sectors are going to be interesting, important, and critical use cases or domains that will catalyze startups, catalyze the development of devices and electronics in the Indian ecosystem,” he said.

India has made some tremendous progress on this path. There was a time India’s tech economy was considered limited to the segment of IT services only. But times have changed now and the country has successfully made its mark in various other tech divisions such as the startup segment, fintech, consumer tech, e-commerce and more.

The minister also said, “We have a momentum going there, which makes us competitive with the rest of the world in terms of scale and quality and size, and innovation and applications that our startups are creating. But our focus is now also on the nuts and bolts of the Internet, the underlying electronics, technology, devices, and products that power the internet.”

On the sidelines of the same event, the minister also said that the Government of India wants the internet to be free from any kind of market domination. The statement particularly gains importance since it came right after the second penalty in a week was imposed on technology major Google for anti-competitive practices by the Competition Commission of India (CCI).  The CCI in its report revealed its investigation findings, which finds Google guilty of abusing its position of power in the Android smartphone manufacturing market. “Our view is that the internet should always be open and free from market domination by anyone,” Chandrasekhar said.

It was also noted during the event how India has skillfully navigated the storm of inflation, global economic slowdown and Covid-19 era struggle only to come out as a winner when the world is still fighting many disturbances. He also said that the country has emerged as the “fastest growing innovative ecosystem” after all these turbulent times the world is going through with attracting high FDI inflows that promise a hopeful future.

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