Railways Minister Piyush Goyal At India Mobile Congress: Highlights

New Delhi: Railways Minister Piyush Goyal addressed the India Mobile Congress in New Delhi today. Apart from Mr Goyal, the three-day event is being attended by communications minister Manoj Sinha, law and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, among others. The India Mobile Congress is the first ever mobile, Internet and technology event in India and is designed to be along similar lines as the Mobile World Congress (MWC) that is held each year in Barcelona, Spain. The event is not affiliated with GSMA, the body that organises the MWC and satellite events across the world, but has been put together by Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), a group that represents most of India's leading telcos.

Here are the highlights of Railway Minister Piyush Goyal speech at the India Mobile Congress:

• Its the age of connectivity that will take India to the next level
• Telecom and Railways have a lot of work ahead of us. We have to look at new standards of service to our customers, we have to probably expand the level of technology, but I have no doubt in my mind that this challenge will only enthuse us
• Connectivity is going to be the key to growth, development
• The increase penetration of smartphones brings all of e-commerce and banking in your pocket
• Our lives are revolving around mobile phones
• As we move closely towards m-governance or mobile governance, it's going to become more easy, more effective and given the pricing of telecom, i think much more economical
• We are seeing so much growth in usage of internet over mobile that we will see 500-600 million people getting connected to the internet
• Great opportunity for start ups and entrepreneurs to integrate technology and public services
• Railways was one of the early users of computers in the country. We started using them in the late 1960s in a small way and by 1985 we had the passenger reservation on computers. Banking started to use computers around 1990s and core banking came in only in the 200-2005 period
• India has demonstrated leadership in mobile
• We are working with Google to bring 400 railway stations Wi-Fi connected
• We are looking at ways to help rural India avail benefits of digital age