Committed to Improve Tele-Density, Voice, Broadband Penetration: Prasad

The NDA government is committed to improve tele-density, voice and broadband penetration and ensure quality of services to both rural and urban areas to achieve the vision of Digital India, Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said in New Delhi Thursday.

"The focus of the department of telecommunications is to create the communication infrastructure for enabling e-services like e-banking, e-commerce, e-education, e-governance, e-entertainment and e-health across the country which is expected to give a new fillip to the inclusive growth of Indian economy," the minister said while celebrating 'Good Governance Day'.

At present, the telecom sector's growth is on the upswing and this growth has to be carried forward with renewed vigour in a sustainable way, he said.

Prasad reiterated that to bridge the rural coverage gap both for voice and broadband penetration, the government has planned to make significant investment for establishing the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) and Government User Network (GUN) to overlay NOFN.

"Based on the pillars of participation, accountability, transparency, responsiveness and efficiency, Good Governance can be effectively achieved through the vision of Digital India of Digital Infrastructure as a utility to every citizen, governance and services on demand and digital empowerment of citizens," he said at the department of electronics and information technology (DeitY).

Some of the key projects launched at the event were - Time Stamping of Digital Signature, Integrated Indian Languages Virtual Keyboard for Android, PARAM Shavak (Super computer in box solution), .bharat domain in Gujarati and Bangla, e-launch of Support International Patent Protection in Electronics & IT scheme (SIP-EIT).

The other project, which were launched - Disbursements under Modified Special Incentive Package Scheme(M-SIPS), Electronics Manufacturing Clusters (EMC) disbursement, Gyansetu - an internet based real time ICT systems to provide e-Services to the rural population of India, MTNL Apps for Android smart phones and e-Governance Competency Framework (e-GCF).

Additionally ebooks were launched by the three departments - of electronics and IT, telecommunications and posts. Posts also launched a pocket book.

Prasad launched three new schemes and services for MTNL customers - Make Jodi, waiver of one month rent and MTNL app.