A senior official from the state Information Technology (IT) Department said that around 8-10 per cent of users on the network accessed these sites, which included those with pornographic and malicious content
Around 10 per cent of users on the Maharshtra government's public Wi-Fi network are using the system to access "immoral" sites, including pornographic ones, and objectionable URLs. This, senior state government officials admit, has led to a "cat-and-mouse game" with them blocking this content once it was detected.
A senior official from the state Information Technology (IT) Department said that around 8-10 per cent of users on the network accessed these sites, which included those with pornographic and malicious content.
"We are working at the back end to block these sites and pass the details on to the Department of Telecom, Ministry of Communication and IT (DoT)," he added.
The official however, said that they had not detected any instances of terror-related sites being accessed using the 'Aaple Sarkar Mumbai Wi-Fi' network. He added that they had blocked access to most such sites with 38 "immoral and doubtful" URLs being banned in addition to the sites which have been disabled by the DoT.
"This percentage of around 8-10 will decline further as the systems are refined. We are ensuring maximum restraint… we are separating these URLs and blocking them in case of anomalies," the official explained, adding that this was better compared to other ISPs.
On January 9, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had launched the first phase of the project covering 510 hotpots, with the system eventually consisting of 1,200 hotspots.
So far, the 34.55 lakh-odd unique users have downloaded 515 TB worth of data, with around 3 lakh people logging in daily.
The project — billed as one of the largest high-speed public networks in the world — was rolled out using infrastructure created for the Mumbai CCTV surveillance project, like optic fiber and poles. It is billed as one of the fastest public Wi-Fi networks in India.
In 2015, the DoT had asked internet service providers to disable 857 sites due to objectionable content and such objectionable sites are routinely banned.
ADS TO BE ADDED
The state will spend Rs 194 crore on the project in five years, of which Rs 130 crore is for the bandwidth, with the remaining expenses being incurred on hardware and equipment. It is also looking at monetising this network using a mix of paid plans after certain free minutes or when data is exhausted, and via advertisements.
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