Digital transactions in Greece will reach 1 billion by the end of 2022, a staggering increase compared to 2018’s 8.8 million such transactions, said Digital Governance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis on Tuesday.
The e-Governance minister was speaking at the 24th Infocom World 2022 conference, which is being held in Athens on November 29-30.
Being able to carry out this many transactions via dedicated online platforms set up by public services, he continued, translates to a person not having to queue up approximately 100 times over one year.
Pierrakakis observed how “we have come to realize that connectivity relating to some specific services that can be catalytic is required a lot more in the post-Covid-19 era.”
A series of investments, such as in data centers and cloud servers, he continued, is the backbone of Greece’s overall strategy for digital transformation and digital services, and will increase the country’s international connectivity even more. This “digital puzzle,” as the minister called it, “changed rapidly over a rather short amount of time, with the public sector changing, digital connectivity changing, and digital nomads arriving to the country.”
Regarding this shift, he added, “I think it’s fair to say that it hasn’t happened before in this industry or in the related industries that make up what we call ‘digital'” in Greece.
But the modernization of home internet access through more powerful technology was also promoted, said the minister, with more than 1,150,000 optic fiber lines already installed in Greece.
Another innovation mentioned by Pierrakakis is the ‘Phaistos’ network, which was created by the 25% of the capital gained by Greece’s auctioning of the broadband frequency spectrum. Essentially a fund, Phaistos attracted money from the private sector too and will also invest in 5G technologies, Pierrakakis added, “which is where the added value will come from.”
Essentially, he concluded, “we used an auction to create a new market.”
SOURCE; ANA-MPA
