Bharti Airtel Chairman Sunil Mittal on Monday said that apart from coverage issues, affordability is the reason why billions of people are not on the Internet yet.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum's virtual Davos Agenda conference on the topic 'Technology Cooperation in the Fourth Industrial Revolution', Mittal said that a very strong, digital structure is the only possible way to remove poverty from the world.
"If a country like India can provide very high quality large amount of data per month at $3 dollops, there is not reason why we can't carry this through into Africa and marginalised parts of the world where affordability is an issue," he said during the panel discussion.
Further, Mittal said technology is always a double-edged sword and it becomes the duty of all stakeholders that the negatives of digital connectivity are minimised and benefits are maximised.
The other speakers in the panel were Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO of Verizon, and Paula Ingabire, Minister of ICT & Innovation, Rwanda, while Samir Saran, President of the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) moderated the panel.
Mittal said that during the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a significant appreciation about telecom and broadband networks.
They have facilitated virtually everything during this pandemic for everyone, from contact tracing to vaccination details, financial services and money transfers, food delivery and so many other things, he added.
Mittal also lauded the role of small and medium enterprises and said any society cannot sustain itself without a robust supply chain and SMEs play a big role there.
Meanwhile, Verizon's Vestberg explained why being connected to the internet is now a human right while also speaking about the role that the EDISON Alliance will play in helping to solve this challenge.
"We need to use 21st century infrastructure, which is mobility, broadband and cloud services in order to get it accessible, affordable and have the right application and scalability," Vestberg said, adding that the EDISON Alliance – a group around 45 people from various disciplines of life – aims to change the life of 1 billion people by having affordable digital inclusion.
The Forum has been hosting its annual meeting in the Swiss ski resort town of Davos for 50 years, but it could not take place in 2021 due to the pandemic and has been deferred till early summer for this year as well.
However, an online 'Davos Agenda' summit is being held for the second consecutive year on the dates originally scheduled for the physical annual meeting.
The week-long digital summit began with a special address by Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday, followed by two virtual sessions -- the first on COVID-19 and the second on 'Technology Cooperation in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.'
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will also deliver the 'State of the World' special address at the Forum at 8:30 PM IST today via video conference.
(With inputs from PTI)