Microsoft aims to bring low-cost broadband to 500,000 Indian villages

While speaking at a dinner in honor of visiting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella said the Redmond-based company aims to bring low-cost broadband to 500,000 villages in India as a part of Digital India initiative (via Times of India).

“We believe that lost-cost broad band connectivity coupled with the scale of cloud computing intelligence that can be harnessed from data can help drive creativity, efficiency and productivity across governments and businesses of all sizes… A key part of both Make in India and Digital India, bringing world class infrastructure into India, respecting India’s digital security, sovereignty and privacy is a key milestone for us.”

Microsoft’s jumping on the Digital India initiative program will be a large help as they have the capacity and the technology to make sure high-tech equipment is available in the country. While technology such as broadband internet can be taken for granted, it is not as widely available as some would initially believe. Last week Engadget reported on the United Nation’s findings that indicate over 4 billion people in the world will go without internet access in 2015.