The pandemic pushed every firm to switch to a work from home mode. In such emergencies, hassle-free internet services play a vital role. Prashant Agarwal, director of WEFE Technology (P) Limited spoke with Orissa POST highlighting the challenges faced during the pandemic. Excerpts:
What is the scope of digital broadband in a Smart City?
Digital is the current era. Everywhere we can see the power of digitalisation. Today every business is digitalised and everyone knows that through digitalisation we can perform our task in a smarter and better way. Broadband is a connectivity that is part of the digital world. Covid-19 taught us that the world never stops. Even during Covid-19, most of us were working from homes. Even students were attending classes online. So digital broadband is definitely the need of the present world. And our Smart City is also a part of that.
What is the current state of internet connectivity here?
In our industry, we believe in doing innovations. We always accept new things for keeping us updated. So you can say today or everyday our industry is improving the quality of services by introducing innovations. Ten to 12 years back, 2Mbps speed was calculated as the one of the fastest internet speed and now-a-days the simple FTTH connection offers up to 1000Mbps of Speed. So you can understand the difference and how fast the industry is improving.
What are the challenges you think may come up during your work?
As I said our industry is moving very fast. Everyday there are better technology products coming to the market. So, old technology is getting outdated. And investment cost of old technology is also becoming zero.
What are your plans for the City?
Our motto has always been to provide highly reliable internet service to Odisha and we are focused on that. We came with Giga fiber concept to Odisha for the first time and made Bhubaneswar the First Giga City of Odisha.
How ready are Indian ISPs and internet exchanges for the surge in internet traffic following the coronavirus?
As during pandemic everyone was at his home and the only way to stay updated was internet. It has created a huge traffic of internet during pandemic but at the same time, corporates were closed. So on one side the demand increased while on the other hand corporate traffic came down. However, the overall demand and traffic was very high. In my reckoning, the internet pipe was handling high data traffic but it was not blasting.
Anything interesting that came up after this pandemic you’d like to share?
I think during pandemic, everybody learnt something new in their life. It was either the approach of seeing the life or business. Pandemic was really a bad phase of everyone’s life. But at the same time it has taught us a lot. We are nothing in front of nature. So save nature and save lives.
Your take on post Covid-19 Indian economy and business revitalisation
As you can see, the Indian economy had recovered. Stock market is already reaching new heights. So we are already on the right path. All thanks to our government. It has taken the right step during the pandemic.
