The Union Minister for Communications Manoj Sinha said that present day telecommunication and networking is expanding its boundaries and voice based network are getting changed to data oriented networks. Speaking at the India-EU ICT Standardisation conference at C-DOT here, he said that this has been possible because of the standardisation of telecom equipment and interconnectivity. He said that India has planned 100 smart cities and it is necessary to take care of our citizens in terms of quality of life, security and well-being. He said that standardisation of machine to machine communication will ensure that there is participation of many players in realization of smart city ICT infrastructure and it will be a platform on which new applications like e-health, e-traffic control, e-waste management, e-mandi, e-education and many other new applications will evolve. Shri Sinha said that it is good trend that European standard development organization is collaborating with Indian telecom standard development organization who are developing standards and a premier telecom R&D institution like C-DOT is developing systems on these standards.
He said this is an important direction for standard way of implementing smart sensor and applications for a Smart City. Speaking on the occasion, the Executive Director of C-DOT Shri Vipin Tyagi said that Public Data Office, PDO that the Minister has launched today will go a long way in providing internet access to the rural masses at affordable cots. He said that this will also help in realizing the dream of the Prime Minister for Digital India and will bridge the gap between haves and have nots. He is this is truly a revolution of sorts for its journey from PCO to PDO. C-DOT PDO is ready to bring yet another revolution by taking internet connectivity to every nook and corner of the country like it did in the 1980s when PCOs changed the Indian telecom scene in by taking telephones to rural India. C-DOT hopes that PDOs would bring next telecom revolution by taking internet connectivity to the masses. Like PCOs, the PDOs would enable small shop owners increase their income by selling data vouchers. This will also encourage village-level entrepreneurship and provide strong employment opportunities, especially in rural and semi urban areas.