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6 September 2018

The Imperial, Janpath

Digital revolution is helping India march towards a digitally connected nation by harnessing power of technology led innovations. Our citizens are increasingly getting connected via cutting edge technologies like 4G and WiFi which are helping them in improving and empowering their lives.

As per latest estimates, India has deployed 95,000 public WiFi hotspots thanks to government and private telco initiatives for boosting broadband connectivity in tourist spots, government offices, educational institutes, health centres, market places, gram panchayats and others.

The draft Telecom Policy i.e. the National Digital Communications Policy 2018 talks about achieving 10 million WiFi hotspots by 2022 through NagarNet and JanWiFi. For achieving this India has a long way to go as NagarNet project focuses on establishing one million WiFi hotspots in urban areas whereas JanWiFi is looking at deployment of 2 million WiFi hotspots in rural areas.

It is with this objective, DigiAnalysys is organizing the second edition of My India WiFi Summit & Awards 2018 to be held on 06th September 2018 in New Delhi, India. The one-day event is focused towards bringing multiple stakeholders - operators, government, vendors, application providers, enterprise users and allied sectors. Upholding a collaborative approach, the comprehensive participation will align industry influencers from different sectors to explore areas of working in hand in hand to bridge the digital divide.

• For achieving large number of hotspots, TRAI has come out with Public Data Office (PDO) concept. The vision of this initiative is to establish an Open Architecture based WiFi Access Network Interface (WANI), such that any entity (company, proprietorship, societies, non-profits, etc.) should easily be able to setup a public WiFi access point and user should be able to connect one or more devices in single session through low denomination package. The PDO initiative needs to gain momentum for India to achieve 10 million milestone.
• Recently, the Telecom Commission has also given a go ahead to inflight connectivity. With this, the airlines and the telecom service providers can offer voice and data services in Indian airspace once an aircraft reaches an altitude of 3,000 metres.
• Reliance Jio plans to deploy around 1.5 million WiFi hotspots at stadiums, housing complexes, bus stops, public parks and tourist spots, schools and colleges, government buildings, and other places in the country.
• Facebook has deployed 700 Express WiFi hotspots in states of Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, and Gujarat by signing with local ISPs. The company has also partnered with Bharti Airtel to launch an additional 20,000 hotspots.
• BSNL plans to deploy 100,000 WiFi hotspots of which 70,000 Wi-Fi hotspots will be from BSNL resources and 20,000 WiFi hotspots through Capex model.
• Pune Smart City Development Corporation is planning to install 150 Google Stations as hotspots. Google Stations will be installed as a hotspot in Pune municipality area by Larsen & Toubro. Potentially, 3 million Punekars can now get online within seconds, to message friends, pay bills, shop online, watch music videos — and do millions of other things — at locations all around the city.
• RailTel has provided high speed RailWire WiFi services to the rural areas by implementing WiFi facility at 298 designated rural railway stations close to the inhabited villages across the country. With the support from Indian Railways and Universal Service Obligatory Fund (USOF) RailTel is providing fast WiFi experience to the railways stations situated at remote corners of India. RailTel has taken a lead in providing fast WiFi for the use of passengers at A1, A category Railway stations through Google as the technology partner. Presently, RailTel has deployed WiFi hotspots in 392 stations and 33 stations are still remaining.
• RailTel has invited tender for supply, installation, testing, commissioning, operation and maintenance of WiFi Services at 7,700 rural railway stations (D, E & F category).
• Globally, total public WiFi hotspots (including homespots) will grow 6-fold from 2016 to 2021 from 94 million in 2016 to 541.6 million by 2021 as per Cisco VNI report.