Want to set up 10 million WiFi hots by 2022: Aruna Sundararajan

Public WiFi will be a key element in the whole strategy of providing broadband access to all. The proliferation of WiFi across India will improve the quality of services and is the most efficient way of providing internet in dense areas including public places in the villages, tells telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan in an interview with Mansi Taneja. Edited Excerpts.

What kind of role will public WIFI will play in India, considering that we are far behind other developed countries in broadband penetration?

A public WiFi is a key element in the whole strategy of providing broadband access. WiFi is important for two reasons. Firstly, mobile data networks will be able to offload the traffic, reducing the congestion in the network for data. This will improve both the speed and access at the last mile. Secondly, in a country like India where data consumption is growing so fast, we have fairly dense, congested areas. Even a village public place is similar, hence the public WiFi will be an efficient way of providing data coverage. Most countries have a huge number of such public WiFi hotspots, making it a more cost-effective option for the telecom players. Currently, there are about 50,000-60,000 public WiFi hotspots in India. The plan is to increase this number to 10 million by 2022. This will improve access and quality of services. It will also create job opportunities – many small enterprises can actually get into this business of becoming PDOs (public data offices).

How will PDOs work? Is it mainly for rural areas?

We have come up with a framework like the MVNOs (mobile virtual network operators), where the PDOs will piggyback on the back of licensed service providers. This has been approved and finalised. We are working with telecom service providers to launch this model. The architecture is ready. It has been tested and found satisfactory. This model will now be replicated across many areas. So, PDOs will offer WiFi services across selected areas where the demand for data consumption is high.

You talked about 10 million WiFi hotspots by 2022. Isn't it a big target to achieve?

No, we have chalked out a multi-pronged strategy to take WiFi hotspots across the country. About 1.25 million hotspots will be set up through USOF (universal service obligation fund) -- five WiFi hotspots per village. This will be done piggybacking on BharatNet. Two important public places will be selected along with three development institutions. This will be set up by June next year. Police stations, health centres, post offices and high schools will be given priority. Another 1 million will be set up by the telecom service providers over the next two years. We will be able to achieve our targets.

How much of an employment will this create?

Around 3-5 lakh jobs can be created once 1 million hotspots are installed riding on BharatNet network.

But, we are talking about WiFi at a time when quality of services has taken a hit and there are network and data connectivity.

Yes, we need a lot of infrastructure upgradation, before we can give the desired access, desired speed and desired quality of services. The department of telecommunications is constantly in dialogue with the telecom service providers to improve their networks. There are issues with quality, data connectivity. But the good thing is that with the proliferation of WiFi hotspots, the quality of services will definitely see an improvement as currently there is huge congestion in networks.

The department also plans to come up with a broadband readiness index for the states? What's the objective behind it?

There is no way of benchmarking currently for states. There is an India index but at the state level, there is nothing. We have the data on number of mobile phones and tele-density across urban and rural areas but what is the state of actual infrastructure -- which state is able to get more or less investment in telecom, which state is able to facilitate ease of doing business, what is the gap between urban and rural infrastructure, rights of way policy, WiFi hotspots, health of infrastructure and others. The idea is to incentivise states and ensure that we reach universal broadband for all by 2022.