Pioneer of India?s telecom revolution, Sam Pitroda, is now working on making its application wider and deeper, something he calls the ?second stage of the telecom revolution?. Pitroda, who is advisor to the Prime Minister on public information, infrastructure and innovation, said he is working on a project that aims at tagging the entire physical asset base and programmes of the country.
The assets would include all such things like land records, public goods, panchayats, human resources, all of which would constitute a comprehensive database, which would help the government in using telecom and IT much more effectively for e-governance, health programmes, education, and agriculture. Currently, all such activities are carried on in silos, which would be broken via this programme.
Speaking at the Express Group?s Idea Exchange programme, Pitroda said the exercise would be as big in scope as the Unique Identification Database, which aims to provide a unique identity number to each individual.
?This would be a part of the second telecom revolution in the country and the idea is to create a complete database and use the information to coordinate activities,? he said.
At the moment, all work in happening in independent silos, which would get connected by this,? Pitroda said. The exercise, first to be undertaken by any country globally, would also help in speedy implementation of government projects.
Pitroda said he is working on utilising the Rs 18,000 crore in the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) to put in place optic fibre network across the country for connecting two-and-half lakh villages, which would be used to provide broadband services. The broadband services would have a speed of 10 Mbps.
He added the last mile for every project would finally be achieved through mobile phones and going forward every mobile phone would be a smart phone.
