Achieving 10 million WiFi Hotspots by 2022 Pravin Prashant, Editor, DigiAnalysys
Urban Telephone Subscribers = 653 mn Urban Teledensity = 158 mm Rural Telephone Subscribers =516 mn Rural Teledensity = 58 Source: TRAI(30th June, 2018)
Urban Broadband Density = 35 Broadband Subscribers = 447 mn Broadband Density = 48 Urban Broadband Density = 35 Rural Broadband Density = 13 Source: TRAI (30th June, 2018), DigiAnalysys
Proportion of Households Owning High Value Agriculture Assets (in %age) Tractor -5.2 Power Tiller – 1.8 Drip Irrigation – 1.6 Harvester – 0.2 Source: NABARD All India Rural Financial Inclusion Survey 2016-17 (NAFIS), DigiAnalysys NAFIS covered a sample of 1.88 lakh persons from 40,327 agri & non-agricultural rural households across 29 states In terms of households, rural broadband density varies between 4 - 7 which is pretty low and this needs to be increased as technology adoption is poor in rural areas
48% are agriculture households and average monthly income is around Rs 48% are agriculture households and average monthly income is around Rs.7,000 - Rs. 8,000 per month. Literacy = 10.5% for male Literacy = 8.9% for female Experience with with Financial Product & Services 23.6 - Used ATM Services at least once in last 3 months. 7.5% - Used cheques to make payment at least once in last 3 months 7.4% - Used Debit/Credit card to make payment at least once in last 3 months 1.6%- Used mobile banking at least once in last 3 months Source: NABARD NAFIS
Operators WiFi Plan Reliance Jio: Deployed over 80,000 access points for hotspots, colleges and WiFi offloads. Plans to deploy around 1.5 million WiFi Hotspots Facebook: Deployed 3,500 Express WiFi hotspots pan-India by signing with local ISPs. Partnered with Bharti Airtel to launch an additional 20,000 Hotspots BSNL: Deployed over 25,000 WiFi hotspots. 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 mode Smart Cities: India will witness around 100 - 1,000 WiFi hotspots per cities. In 100 Smart Cities Project of Ministry of Urban Development the total number of WiFi Hotspots would be around 25,0000 hotspots BBNL: Planning to deploy around 514,382 Wi-Fi hotspot services across 250,000 gram panchayats covered under BharatNet Project Phase I and Phase II. Presently under process RailTel: Provides high speed RailWire WiFi services by implementing WiFi facility through Google at 413 designated A1 and A category railway stations. With the support from Indian Railways and Universal Service Obligatory Fund (USOF) RailTel is providing fast WiFi experience to 200 railways stations situated at remote corners of India. And provided WiFi in 98 railway stations of its own. 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) WiFi Choupal: Plans to deploy WiFi at 7,183 gram panchayats (GPs) under the BharatNet project in 12 states - Bihar, Chandigarh, Chattisgarh, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Puducherry, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand
DigiAnalysys Recommendations. 1 DigiAnalysys Recommendations 1. WiFi hotspots deployment as per India's population so Indian government should strategise accordingly. 2. 6.5 - 7 million WiFi hotspots to be deployed in 649,481 villages with total population of 833 million. Deployment through Government funds, BBNL, USOF or CSR Fund of telcos and other technology companies. 3. 3.5 - 3.0 million WiFi hotspots to be deployed in 7,935 cities/towns with total population of 377 million. Deployment through telcos, ISPs and others. 4. Deployment in villages will lead to achieving doubling of farmers income and doubling of crop yield as ministry information w.r.t. agriculture, education, health, skill development, water resources, mother and child development, government services should be available in regional languages.
DigiAnalysys Recommendations. 5 DigiAnalysys Recommendations 5. All the ministries related to rural development i.e. Ministry of Telecommunications, Ministry of IT & Electronics, Ministry of Rural Development, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Ministry of Water Resources, Ministry of Human Resources and Development, Ministry of Skill Development, Ministry of Mother & Child Development and others need to come forward and work together if the focus is on uplifting villagers. 5. Digital Awareness Melas should be conducted in all 649,481 villages so that people are aware about how WiFi/digital can transform their lives. 6. Maintenance of BharatNet Network and WiFi CPEs will be a big challenge so government should train Village Level Entrepreneur (VLE) for After Market Maintenance (AMS) of BharatNet Network and CPEs thereby employing around 65,000 locals for this job. 7. There would be lot of savings for the government by putting digital information in the portal either through video, text or pictures and not go for conventional approach like banner, hoardings and others.
Future: 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. Both these WiFi initiatives are planned to be funded through Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) and Public Private Partnerships. The recent Report of the 5G High Level Forum talks about spectrum policy for WiFi which talks about opening additional bands of unlicensed spectrum in the 5 GHz band for outdoor use. All this proves that WiFi is complimentary technology for 4G and 5G and not competing technology and so more they use WiFi technology, the more spectrum they can conserve for voice or data communications.
Sessions: Achieving 10 Million Wi-Fi Hotspots by 2022; Wi-Fi Hotspots in Rural: Opportunities and Challenges; Public Wi-Fi Hotspots in Urban: Opportunities and Challenges; EnterpriseWiFi: Exploring Monetization and Enhancing Customer Engagement; E-SIM/Inflight Connectivity/Wi-Fi on the Move: Connecting the Dots.
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