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12.5 lakh public WiFi hotspots to be set up at a cost of Rs 6,000 cr

This is part of the government's ambitious project BharatNet to connect rural hinterland with broadband services

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Telecom Commission, the highest policy making body of the department of telecommunications, on Thursday approved setting up of about 12.5 lakh public WiFi hotspots at a cost of Rs 6,000 crore.

Called Gram Net, the project will be funded from universal service obligation fund (USOF) as viability gap funding and will offer WiFi hotspots in rural areas at all developmental institutions, schools, police stations, post offices and community health centers across all 2.5 lakh gram panchayats across the country. This is part of the government's ambitious project BharatNet to connect rural hinterland with broadband services.

The tender for the project will be out soon and the WiFi hotspots are expected to be installed by December this year, a senior official from the department of telecommunications said.

The Commission also approved funding of pilot projects to connect districts through alternative technologies. An amount of Rs 10 crore will be given per scheme by the government to the service provider or the consortium to promote usage of new technologies. Besides, it also approved doing away with double taxation for virtual network operators (VNOs), which will enable an uptake of the market.

As per the new telecom policy, the target is to provide 1 gbps connectivity to all gram panchayats by 2020 and 10 gbps by 2022 and enabling 100 mbps broadband on demand to all key development institutions and deploying public WiFi hotspots.

The first phase of BharatNet to connect 100,000 gram panchayats has already been completed and the second phase -- to connect 150,000 gram panchaysts -- is going on and expected to be completed by March 2019.

Earlier in May, the Telecom Commission had accepted Trai's recommendations on setting up public data offices (PDOs) on the lines of public calling offices to boost public Wi-Fi hotspots. The "pay-as-you-go" PDOs will buy data from telecom or internet service providers and resell sachet-sized data packs starting at Rs 2. DoT will establish a light-touch licensing regime for the proliferation of PDOs and PDOAs for providing internet access through Wi-Fi hotspots, according to the new telecom policy.

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