Telangana Govt Aims to Provide Internet to Every Household via Digital Telangana Initiative

With the central government’s talks to create a Digital India, the states (atleast a few of them) are not lagging far behind to provide hassle free Internet connection in every house. The advent of Internet has brought in changes of many forms in the country, and the spread of the same would only create space for growth.

The Telangana government has set out with a Digital Telangana aim- to provide Internet connectivity to all households in the state under its initiative, IT Secretary Jayesh Ranjan said. “We are trying to ensure providing Internet to each and every household in the state,” he told a FICCI-organised seminar on ‘Integrated Digital Solutions for a Smarter Telangana’. “We are making this ambitious target of providing Internet to every person in different ways through broadband connectivity, 4G, Wi-Fi and e-panchayats. We will ensure that ‘Internet For All’ does not mere just remain a slogan,” he added.

There are talks on amongst government authorities to make Internet a fundamental right, to the likes of education and freedom of speech. Just alike, the Digital Telangana is being built on two major factors- supply component (“Internet For All”) and demand component (“Let us usher in Digital Democracy”), Ranjan said. “We are working on laying optic fibre to every household. There are more than 8.5 million households in the state and the opportunity that has arisen for us to accept such a daunting challenge,” he added.

In May this year, we reported the Google fibre coming to Telangana. The state’s IT minister KT Rama Rao had requested Google to send a team to India for examining the feasibility of their high-speed fiber broadband services in Telangana. The facility is to be set up at Gachibowli in Hyderabad over a 7.2 acres spread.

The government is going to utilize its resources to the optimum. With it’s flagship Watergrid programme, wherein piped water is aimed to be supplied to each household, the project’s duct lines would also be used (same trenches) to put optical fibre cables to reach every household in the state. In that way, every house where their water reaches will also have Internet reaching. Much thought seems to have been put for the initiative by the government, which is commendable on it’s part.

It is also making attempts at encouraging private telecom players to roll out 4G services just to make sure that everyone in the state is quipped with Internet. Two telecom firms in the state have also announced statewide 4G accesses by the end of the year, to add up to its digitalization.

The government, like many other states have now put into fashion, wants to set up Wi-Fi zones. It has plans to set up Wi-Fi hubs in Hyderabad, Warangal and a few other important towns. Telangana is however not the first to take up these moves. In many other cities around the country, this initiative has kicked and is running. Here’s a list of some Wi-Fi access hotspots across the country.

This initiative of the government to make at least one member of every household digital-literate, is not only to make Telangana digital, but a lot brighter.