Hughes is the world’s leading provider of broadband satellite services, products, and network solutions. Hughes provides broadband satellite networks and services for enterprises, governments, small businesses, and consumers in over 100 countries encompassing all broadband solutions and managed services, bridging the best of satellite and terrestrial technologies.

Given some key issues — like the size and topography of our country, lack of communication infrastructure in rural areas and problems (both from a technical perspective and cost) associated with building communication infrastructure in rural areas — the ubiquitous nature of satellites is very effective for a country like ours especially in rural areas.

• What should the government do to promote e-governance in India?

The National e-Governance Plan will help bring the benefits of ICT to rural citizens, enable access to digital services (both government and private services) and help address and hopefully eliminate the rural-urban digital divide. Hughes’ objective is to not only provide basic connectivity to rural areas but also deliver value added services like interactive vocational education, e-learning, tele-medicine and e-commerce and other value added services such as pre-paid mobile top-ups, rail ticketing, low-cost air ticketing, etc.

• What are your plans in India?

One key aspect will be the ease of deployment across the country and availability of relevant services and applications. What this means is that using technology, these broadband centers can be set up quickly, irrespective of location. All services are integrated with service providers for enabling transactions, billing and payment settlement in a transparent manner. As a result, students in far flung regions now have access to educational content to help them prepare for competitive exams for engineering, medicine and other streams, vocational programs to acquire skills for better employment opportunities in sectors like retail, travel, banking and financial services, insurance, telecom and networking,etc. Farmers have access to land records, commodity prices, latest crop and weather information and prices for their produce. These service are today available at over 1,500 locations and we expect to connect over 10,000 locations in the coming year.

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