In the first industry presentation at BW Businessworld Digital India Summit 2017, Vijay Kohli, regional business manager-Asia Pacific and Japan, AKAMAI, spoke about the needs and wants of a successful Digital India

In the first industry presentation at BW Businessworld Digital India Summit 2017, Vijay Kohli, regional business manager-Asia Pacific and Japan, AKAMAI, spoke about the needs and wants of a successful Digital India.

He highlighted the importance of network speed in today’s fast paced world.

“People crave for speed,” he said. “If a page takes 10 seconds to upload then people don’t appreciate it, transactions need to happen in 2-3 seconds to meet the expectations of the general public.”

He spoke about the quality of the network being used by the public.

“We love quality,” said Kohli. “Without good enough quality, nobody will look to avail your services.”

He said that people will switch to private telecoms as they would be willing to pay more and get better speed and quality, thus it is the responsibility of the govt. to ensure that speed and quality are the 2 primary pillars of India’s Digital India movement.

He also spoke about the importance of reaching out to people and accessibility.

“We need scale.” In a country with 1.2 billion people, we need billions of hits to deliver information in real time. He also mentioned that this is India’s biggest challenge as other countries do not have such a large consumer base to provide quality services to.

Fourthly, he highlighted the importance of reliability of digital services promised.

“We expect reliability, there are extremely fine lines for error in the digital sector, all portals and sites need to be working 24*7 around the clock.” He said that there is no difference between telecom services and E-governance systems as both can be accessed by anyone at any given time.

Lastly, he emphasised the importance of cyber-security. “We demand security. If we don’t secure ourselves from viruses, then digital India will not have a robust future.”