Government of India to build large-scale public Wi-Fi network

On December 9 (local time), the Indian government approved the deployment of large-scale public Wi-Fi networks in India, the world’s second largest internet market. India’s IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the government is launching PM WANI (Prime Minister Wi-Fi Access Network Interface).

More than 1 billion people in India use mobile lines thanks to the recent popularity of cheap Android phones and the world’s cheapest mobile data plan. This scale was unthinkable 30 years ago, when there were fewer than 2.5 million mobile phones in India. One of the most important things in the early days of Indian telephone distribution was the late 1980s when the Indian government came up with the idea of installing public telephones in cities and villages. As a result, if you go to a nearby store, you can make a call for a few cents. These stores, which used to act as public telephone offices, are now public data offices. It is said that the government does not collect license fees and tuition fees for the program to succeed.

These public data offices will partner with small and medium-sized telecommunications companies and large telecommunications companies, while linking with public data collectors and using fiber optic networks. The program is expected to contribute to democratizing broadband access and content delivery that will be available to millions of people at an affordable price, while creating millions of interoperable Wi-Fi hotspots in India.

In India, hundreds of millions of people have been accessing online over the past decade, but the population is still unable to connect to the Internet. The Indian government is hoping the new program will close this digital divide. It is predicted that the expansion of public Wi-Fi could not only create jobs, but could also serve as a lever to boost disposable income for SMEs and boost India’s GDP.

India’s announcement is a strategy to bring a larger population online. Of course, experts point out that the Indian government should have started such a program 7 to 8 years ago. Related information can be found here .