Sundar Pichai delivered a keynote address at a Google for India event, where he outlined the company’s plans for India. He is scheduled to meet President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his first visit to India since he took the top job in August. He will also meet Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad later. On Thursday, Pichai will meet Modi after which he will attend a chat session with students of Shri Ram College of Commerce. In the evening, he will attend a banquet hosted by President Mukherjee.
Technology giant Google will bring Internet connectivity to 100 railway stations across the country by next year, its CEO Sundar Pichai today said.
This is part of the US-based firm’s focus on bringing Internet to everyone in India, which has the world’s second largest population.
“100 stations will have wi-fi by December 2016. Mumbai Central (station) to go live by January. This is in partnership with RailTel,” Pichai said at a Google for India event.
The telecom wing of the Indian Railway, RailTel, had signed an agreement with the subsidiary of Google India to provide wi-fi facilities at 400 stations across the country. During his two-day visit, Pichai will meet President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He will also address students at a Delhi University college.
“Our focus on bringing Internet access to everyone, making sure our products are working for them in a meaningful way and then ensure our platform allows them to add their voice to the Internet,” the India-born CEO said.
Pichai, who is on his maiden visit to India after taking over as the CEO of Google earlier this year, said the company is also expanding its headcount in India, especially in engineering operations.
“Google is looking at hiring people for Bangalore and Hyderabad… We will also build huge new campus in Hyderabad to build capabilities,” he said.
Pichai said as part of Google’s efforts to help women get online, the company is expanding bicycle for women programme nationally.
“From a pilot, we will now expand the programme to cover three lakh villages in three years,” he said.
The first Indian origin CEO of Google, Pichai, laid out three-step approach to promote Internet in India — better access to the full Internet, make its product better to suit Indian market and make it easier for Indians to build solution on its platform like Android and Chrome to resolve local problems.
Besides wi-fi networks, Pichai shared that in the first quarter of 2016, Google will release a feature called ‘Tap to Translate’ that allows the instant translation of any text on the Android phones.
“With Tap to Translate you can copy text anywhere on your Android phone and instantly get the translation, right then and there, without ever leaving the app,” Google’s Vice President for Next Billion initiative Caesar Sengupta said.
Under the roadmap for India, Google has already launched virtual keyboard that enables people to type in 11 Indian languages.
To encourage development of technological solution linked to local needs, Google announced a programme to train two million new Android developers over the next three years by working closely with more than 30 universities across country in partnership with National Skill Development Corporation.
Google Vice President in India and Southeast Asia Rajan Anandan said by 2018 more than 500 million users will be online from all 29 states and speaking over 23 languages.
“But in 2020, over 30 per cent of mobile Internet will still be from 2G connections. Google has been on a long journey in India to build products that connect more people, regardless of cost, connectivity, language, gender or location,” Anandan said.
Speaking on the most awaited Project Loon, Pichai said that the project will launch balloons in the sky to help reach out to rural areas.
Elaborating the same, Google Vice President (Access Strategy and Emerging Markets) Marian Croak said the company is “passionate” about building and deploying new Internet infrastructure around the world.
“One of the technologies that we have in our portfolio is Project Loon. It’s a project that we are working on with local telcos all across the world.
“And we are testing these high altitude balloons which literally act as almost like floating cell towers… To connect people in hard to reach regions that are scarcely populated and we are working to hopefully bring Project Loon to India in rural communities that have very few people connected to the Internet,” she said.
The statement assumes importance as Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had recently told Parliament that Google’s Project Loon will interfere with cellular transmissions of mobile operators in India.
“The proposed frequency band to be used in the Loon Project of Google is being used for cellular operations in India and it will lead to interference with cellular transmissions,” Prasad had said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha on December 11.
Croak said the company is working across the world with local carriers, operators and suppliers and does not carry out the project on its own.
“Think of the enormity of bringing billions of people to the Internet and doing it in a way that is affordable and giving them abundant access and the scope of that is too much for any one entity to tackle on its own.
“So I always tell my team don’t think of us as having competitors, think of us as only having partners in this arena. We have to work together to solve this problem,” she said.
“The core element of Google’s mission is universal access and we drive our conviction and vision from that mission. And its that everyone in the world should have affordable and abundant access to the full and open Internet,” she added.
Google, under its Project Loon, is using big balloons floating at a height of 20 kilometers above earth surface for transmission of Internet services. It has already tested this technology in New Zealand, California (the US) and Brazil.
As per Google, each balloon can provide connectivity to a ground area about 40 kms in diameter using a wireless communications technology called LTE or 4G.
To use LTE or 4G, Project Loon partners with telecom companies to share cellular spectrum so that people will be able to access the Internet everywhere directly from their phones and other LTE-enabled devices.
Google uses solar panel and wind to power electronic equipment in the balloon throughout the day.