Microsoft To Explore ‘Internet Through TV’ Option In Jharkhand

Microsoft is planning to offer Internet services via TV in Jharkhand. Microsoft will be exploring the option of utilising the bandwidth of TV cables along with set top boxes to offer Internet services. Providing Television to households will then be the responsibility of department of Information and Technology for linking rural households to e-governance schemes.

The project’s feasibility is going to be tested by Microsoft’s team who is going to be visiting Jharkhand by the end of this month. The IT Secretary, Sunil Kumar Barnwal pointed out that he had met Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella along with his team members a couple of months ago asking them to explore options in Jharkhand. He said “We wanted Microsoft to understand that Jharkhand is on path of digital revolution and instead of focussing on big cities like Bangalore and Hyderabad only they can also consider Ranchi in their list of priority.”

When asked about tying up with Microsoft for cloud services, he said that at the moment he would not be able to do so. The Indian government is not in favour of them using private cloud services and they are dependent on cloud being developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC). However, with a change in policy, Jharkhand would definitely be among the first ones to adopt it.