India largest connected nation with 800 million broadband users: Rajeev Chandrasekhar

India is the largest connected nation in the world with more than 800 million broadband users, said minister of state for electronics and information technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

Addressing the concluding session of India Internet Governance Forum 2022, the minister said that 5G and the largest rural broadband connectivity project at BharatNet will have 1.2 billion Indian users. “It will constitute the single largest presence of the global internet.”

Chandrasekhar added that there is expectation to further technological innovations as well as updated regulatory policies to remain relevant. “The deep involvement by all stakeholders will be the third leg of this Global Standard Cyber Law Framework that we hope will catalyze that Indian internet and the economy.”

“India now has 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 the economy is an internetization of their economies,” he said.

The minister added that during the G20 Presidency, the PM declared that he will be open to India offering that platform to all the nations in the Global South that want to transform their digital economy and their governance model.

“The multistakeholder architecture of the Indian internet happened after a lot of effort. In the next few years, this multistakeholder engagement must go beyond the intellectual academic discussion to ensure the internet grows and innovation grows while keeping both safe and trusted and accountable for all the billion digital nagriks of India,” Chandrasekhar added.

Speaking about the second edition of IIGF, Secretary, MeitY, Alkesh Kumar Sharma said that the Digital India program augments India’s mission with digital literacy initiative skills with an exemplary indigenous success story, which has become a world story with technical progress shaping new India.

He added that the theme of IIGF 2022 ‘Leveraging Techade for Empowering Bharat’ is appropriate as India is looking at the major initiative of connecting the unconnected ones with best internet connectivity. “We are 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.”

The India Internet Government Forum is an initiative associated with the UN Internet Governance Forum (UN-IGF). The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is a multi-stakeholder platform bringing representatives together from various groups, all at par to discuss public policy issues related to the Internet.