Telecom Minister for India – Ravi Shankar Prasad announced today that the number of Internet users in the country is likely to reach 500 million this year. He said, India has grown to around 400 million Internet users. If we take TRAI numbers then it is somewhere close to 332 million. As per service providers, they were telling me that up to date it is 402 million. We were to have 500 million users by 2017, I feel it will happen this year itself.” He made this announcement while launching Digital Desh Drive 2. India has now over 100 crore mobile subscribers, he added.
According to the official data shared by him in Lok Sabha, the total mobile subscriber base at the end of February 2016 has 98.2 crore GSM mobile users and 4.45 crore subscribers on CDMA network. According to the minister, people in India, especially at grass root levels are using technology to transform their lives. Prasad said, after being IT and communications minister, I am indeed experiencing a different India. India is sitting on cusp of a big digital revolution. Indians first observe technology, then adopt technology and then they start enjoying it and they become empowered in the process.
The Digital Desh 2.0 is a narrative story book that has incorporated insights of small Indian businesses that are using Internet to transform themselves. iSpirit co-founder Sharad Sharma, who is a contributor to the project, said that smart phones are transforming the nation with more people using it for their routine work. Sharma said, news reading on mobile phones have crossed total readerships of top 10 newspapers in India. Next year, what would change is, most in India would be paying on their mobile phones than in any other country in the world because of new payment systems being launched.
