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Andrew Bonwick
Vice President of Product Development at Relm Insurance
Madhav Sheth
CEO of Ai+ Smartphone
Stephen Rose
CEO Render Networks
A strange phenomenon is taking place in China. Contrary to the global trend, Chinese telcos are unwinding their WiFi deployments. The three service providers, China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile have decommissioned 87,000 WiFi access points this year. While WiFi is shrinking telcos added 680,000 2G, 3G or 4G base stations in the country.
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On the other hand, there has been a marked increase in WiFi deployments in India. WiFi hotspots are emerging as an important and critical part of the mobile data revolution in the country. As of now India has a little more 30,000 WiFi hotspots in the country but this is likely to increase dramatically with both the telcos and the government focusing on it.
While Vodafone and Bharti Airtel have together formed a company, Firefly to provide public WiFi focus on Government WiFi business, Reliance Jio is also setting up WiFi hotspots in all the major cities in the country. Firefly was in news recently for trying to raise foreign funding. BSNL has already installed more than 300 hotspots in 25 cities and hopes to increase this number to 1,000 by the end of the current financial year. Besides companies like Ozone are continuously adding newer WiFi hotspots.
Not just the telcos who are setting up their own WiFi networks in the country, the Government is also launching a number of initiatives to increase WiFi deployment in the country. A case in point is Indian Railways, which has recently announced that it would provide free WiFi to its passengers. Further, providing free WiFi was an important part of Delhi Government’s election campaign. The Central Government’s programs like Smart Cities and Digital India are also likely to push WiFi deployment in the country.
