Uttarakhand Gets Its First Internet Exchange At Dehradun, To Improve Quality Of Broadband, Internet Services In Hill State

Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Monday (1 November) inaugurated the first Internet Exchange in the state of Uttarakhand, hosted at Dehradun, through a virtual inaugural ceremony from Delhi.

The inauguration of the 10th internet exchange of National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) will help in enhancing and improving the quality of Internet and Broadband services in Uttarakhand.

The NIXI is a not for profit organization under section 8 of the Companies Act 2013, and was registered on 19 June 2003. NIXI was set up for peering of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) among themselves for the purpose of routing the domestic traffic within the country, instead of taking it all the way to US or abroad, thereby resulting in better quality of service (reduced latency) and reduced bandwidth charges for ISPs by saving on International Bandwidth. NIXI is managed and operated on a neutral basis, in line with the best practices for such initiatives globally.

Speaking on the occasion, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, said that six years back, in the year 2015, Our PM laid the foundations of Digital India with the objectives of bringing efficiency, ensuring corruption free governance, promoting entrepreneurship, creating jobs and developing competencies in certain strategic areas of technology by increasing the size of the digital economy.

Today, each and every paisa goes directly to the bank accounts of beneficiaries through Direct Benefit Transfer hence, ensuring transparency and accountability. He added that post covid, the digital economy is growing at a fast pace with addition of many new jobs and Unicorns in the technology sector. The sector is able to attract a huge volume of investments, he said.

Talking about the growth of digital technology in the pandemic period, the Minister said that over the last 18 months, the world suffered through the worst pandemic of the 21st century. It disrupted our day-to-day activities and had a significant impact on our economy. The pace with which our economy has bounced back, a lot of that has to do with our early investments made in the Digital India Programme, the minister said.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar committed that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology will support the efforts of bringing digital revolution in Uttarakhand.

This exchange at Dehradun not only will benefit the netizens of Dehradun but promote the arrival of more Internet Service Providers and more Content Delivery network at Dehradun. It will make the Digital ecosystem more robust and reliable, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said in a statement.

He also announced that the next Internet Exchange in Uttarakhand will be in Nainital District.

According to the ministry, the NIXI is planning to launch many small nodes like this in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities in the near future so as to improvise the entire internet ecosystem in India and enable the netziens to access internet at low cost with high speeds.