LIVE FROM COMMUNICASIA 2013: The growth of the mobile internet, which is now being driven by users in emerging markets accessing online content for the first time, is leading to a “rebuilding of the internet,” according to Karim Temsamani, head of Asia Pacific at Google.

“It’s not the technolgy, it’s not the new platforms, it’s even not the new social networks that are driving the change, it’s the people,” he said.

Driving the change is the fact that new users — including 500 million in emerging markets expected to join the mobile internet over the next two years — come without “all of the desktop-based habits we all have here.”

“People coming to the internet now, and accessing for the first time from mobile devices, will demand a different internet to what we are seeing now. They will demand that we rebuild the internet from an entirely different foundation,” he said.

“In 2012, India’s entire mobile traffic exceeded desktop traffic. Desktop is just not going to matter in India, just the way that fax doesn’t matter to us anymore,” Temsamani said.

In markets such as South Korea and Japan, the majority of YouTube views already come from mobile devices. “Back in 2011 — two years ago — Google Maps globally got more visits on mobile devices than on desktops. That’s a rebuilding of the internet,” he said.

Noting that much of the growth in user numbers for mobile internet services will come from Asia, he noted: “As far as the internet is concerned, this is Asia’s defining moment.”