Kolkata has become country's first 'metro' to get public WiFi on a large scale, credit to Reliance Jio. Earlier RJIL has launched public WiFi services in Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Surat of Gujarat in April-May of 2014.
Jio is banking upon its WiFi services to reach the masses before they launch their 4G wireless services across the country.
Today's launch event of WiFi services in Kolkata was taken care of by the political party in charge. Being a launch of public WiFi services, they chose the Park Street junction for the place. CM of West Bengal, Mamta Banerjee, Mayor of Kolkata and other leaders of the party was present in the event. From Jio, eastern head Tarun Jhunjhunwala was also present. Mr. Jhunjhunwala did speak up, but nothing new about upcoming 4G services was heard. CM dedicated this public WiFi to the youth.
As it was known from the speeches of the leaders, Jio has done almost 90% of its OFC laying work - 2000km of OFC has been laid down in last 2 years and another just mere 200-300km of OFC laying work is remained. As CM told by the April-end Jio will cover most of the Metro areas along with parts of greater Kolkata. At this initial phase, Jio Wifi is live in the stretch of Park Street Metro station to Mallickbazar junction and in few days services will be live in Saltlake too.
When I reached there by 4:30pm I found there was a WiFi network alive - 'Jio' which was secured by WPA2 protocol. It was probably used by event organisers. There was no open Jio Wifi network. After the event closed, 'Jionet' WiFi signal goes live after 6:15pm. Initially the signal was fluctuating a lot, even the log on page was not opening properly. It may be because of several login procedures were going on. I have been noticed that there are few white spots, like in front of Au Bon Pain I lost Wifi signal and shifted to my operator's 3G network.
How to Use Jionet Wifi:
1. Enable WiFi on your device.
2. Find Jionet network alive.
3. Connect to it and you will be landed on the login page of Jionet.
4. There type your mobile no. and check on the Agree to T&C box and click Get Started!
5. In few seconds, you will get an SMS from DM-JIONET containing the password.
6. Use the password and you will be connected to the internet.
On my experience, the speed was good though fluctuating a time. Interestingly while running Ookla's speed test with Jio's server at Mumbai the test failed, twice.
So guys use it and share your experience how is Jionet.
