It was announced a while back that the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, will pay a visit to India this month. Well, Mr. Pichai is currently in India, and the press conference was set for today, and has been wrapped up quite recently. Some reports stated that the next step in the Android One project might be announced in India today, but that didn’t happen. Google’s CEO had plenty to say during the event, and everything was basically closely connected to India, and the country’s development in pretty much every sense. That being said, let’s see what happened at the event shall we.
Now, the main theme of the event was basically Google’s support for the Digital India initiative. Mr. Pichai tackled a couple of really important India-related tech aspects, including the confirmation that the Mountain View giant will be working with Indian Railways in order to bring free Wi-Fi connectivity to 400 train stations in the country. This is not exactly a new announcement, but we didn’t have that many details until today. Mr. Pichai has revealed that 100 train stations will get free Wi-Fi before the end of 2016, and they estimate that around 10 million people will actually use it on a daily basis. The project itself will kick off in Mumbai Central next month. In order to achieve this, Google will partner up with PSU RailTel and will use their fibre optic network in order to connect everything.
Now, Google’s CEO has also talked about Project Loon during the event, which was to be expected. Google’s optimistic plan to provide internet to pretty much every person on the planet via hot air balloons is in full motion, and Mr. Pichai has said that they’re exploring options on how to implement this over India in order to offer such connectivity to the whole country. Now, it is worth mentioning that India’s Telecom Minister has raised some concerns regarding Project Loon quite recently. He said that the frequency band Google intends on using will interfere with cellular transmissions in the country.
Google’s partnership with Tata Trust has also been mentioned during the event, the two companies are providing bicycles to 1,000 villages across three states in order to educate women about internet and everything connected to it. These bicycles will, of course, be equipped with devices connected to the internet. That is pretty much it as far as the event itself goes, but it is worth mentioning that Mr. Pichai actually blogged about how internet can impact India, and that it is key for further development of that Asian country.