Udit Agarwal
Three GSAT satellites will be launched before the end of 2019, after which India will be one among the nations to enjoy 100 GBPS speed in connectivity, says Dr K Sivan, Chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
While addressing a convocation at a university on Saturday, 22 September, Sivan was quoted as saying, “India has the world’s second largest internet user base. But, our present broadband is 76th in the world. ISRO has already launched GSAT-19 in June 2017. This year, we will launch GSAT-11 and GSAT-29 and early next year, GSAT-20 will be launched.
Gitam University conferred Dr Sivan with an honorary degree of doctor of science during the convocation, reported the Times of India. The Government of India has approved a budget of Rs 10,900 crore for 30 PSLVs and 10 GSLV MK-3 are scheduled to be launched within the next four years, in addition to more than 50 spacecraft.
In order to widen the participation of the industry with academia (in the space sector), ISRO has recently launched a capacity-building programme. These activities will be planned and coordinated through the establishment of space tech incubation centres across India.
These wi-fi hotspots will ride on the main function of BharatNet, under which government is connecting to around more than 2.5 lakh gram panchayats with the help of an optical fibre.
In 7,183 GPs, the government as of now is in partnership with CSCs is offering WiFi Choupals (wi-fi hotspot service) in more than 12 states. Since the launch of these hotspots, there has been a 190% jump in data usage to around more than 95 terabyte in six months of the service, according to a report of DoT in April.
The DoT in the draft of the new telecom policy had envisaged an investment of $100 billion in digital communications by the end of 2022. The draft policy announced in the month of May this year also fixed a target of providing 1 gbps connectivity to all GPs by the end of 2020 and 10 gbps by the end of 2022, setting up 5 million public wi-fi hotspots by 2020 and 10 million by 2022.
