To realise its dream of a 'Digital India', the government needs to install about 80 lakh Wi-Fi hotspots in the country to match the current global average of one public Wi-Fi hotspot per 150 people. India currently has about 31,000 hotspots deployed and the slow/delayed infrastructure development is the biggest challenge facing the Digital India programme.
In Digital India, 95 crore Indians living without internet
According to a joint ASSOCHAM-Deloitte study titled 'Digital India: Unlocking the Trillion Dollar opportunity,' availability of spectrum in Indian metros is about a tenth of the same in cities in developed countries, primarily putting a major roadblock in providing high-speed data services.
At the same time, in what seems to be a huge digital divide, over 55,000 villages of around 6,50,000 villages in India remain deprived of mobile connectivity.
"For digital technology to made be accessible to every citizen, significant efforts are needed to customise apps and services to cater to local needs. Finding vendors who can provide such applications has become a challenge," the report said.
Challenges related to skills, technical capabilities and policies have hampered the implementation of the Digital India programme. Lack of clarity in foreign direct investment policies is a common hurdle on the way towards accomplishing the mission.
Development of digital infrastructure is a critical component of Digital India. To further enable development of digital infrastructure, the following measures should be considered as uniform policies for deploying telecom and optic-fibre infrastructure:
- The report suggested that as has been for civic infrastructure projects, a uniform policy across all states with a reasonable cost structure is required along with PPP models that need to be explored for sustainable development of digital infrastructure. In addition, the government should make additional spectrum available to telecom service providers for deployment of high-speed data networks.
- Effective collaboration with the private sector, the report stressed, is critical to the development of the digital infrastructure. Innovative engagement models that ensure commercial viability need to be developed. Further, startups need to be incentivised for the development of the last-mile infrastructure and localised services and applications.
