Maran for Indian Internet content

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New Delhi, Jan 18 Internet, like television or newspapers, should have more local content for better penetration and adoption by the masses, Communications and Information Technology Minister Dayanidhi Maran said here Thursday.

'If we look at the case of television in India, the real adoption and penetration came only when the content became local,' Maran said at the inauguration of the India Digital Summit 2007, organised by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

'Internet being an interactive medium gives us great opportunity to find out what the customer wants,' he said.

'We will soon launch internationalised domain names (IDN) in the Indian languages including Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam and others, enabling local language domain names at the secondary level.'

The minister said that servers will now be hosted in India so that the internet traffic can be routed within the country. This will prove to be cost-effective for the service providers.

'BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd), MTNL (Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd) and STPI (Software Technology Parks of India) are working together on hosting servers in the country. And this will be done within three to four months,' Maran told reporters on the sidelines of the meet.

On the issue of reduction in roaming rates for mobile telephony, he said: 'I am anxiously waiting for the roaming charges to come down.'

[Rubber Duck]

Yes, India is a slow train coming and Rick there goes another Billion customers you can scratch from your sales pitch!