The Government today said the cost of data has reduced drastically from 269 rupees per GB in March 2014 to 8 rupees 31 paise per GB in June 2024. In a written reply in Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Communications, Pemmasani Chandra Sekhar said the government has brought various reforms in the telecom sector in the last 10 years and this has led to a lot of transformation. The MoS informed that internet users have increased from 25.15 crores in March 2014 to 96.9 crores in June this year. He said India saw the fastest rollout of 5G services in the world with 4.6 lakhs Base Trans-receivers Stations, BTS deployed across the country.
In a separate reply, Mr Sekhar said that the Department of Telecommunications has developed an AI-based system to identify the suspected mobile connections taken on fake documents. DoT has developed the Sanchar Saathi portal to empower citizens to report suspected fraud communications and Unsolicited Commercial Communications. Based on the reports of citizens and further analysis, over one lakh mobile connections have been disconnected, 2809 mobile handsets blocked and 6261 Whatsapp accounts disengaged.
