In Feb 2015 Reliance Jio had set up 4G powered public wifi zone at Park street in Kolkata, now it plans to extend the coverage to 4 more areas in the city. This is in line withWest Bengal chief minister Mamta Banerjee's aim of making the whole of Kolkata a wifi zone. The Chief Minister said that the company has laid down the cable connectivity covering 2,000 km, and around 250-300 km cable laying work was likely to be completed soon. “Reliance Jio Infocomm has completed more than 90 percent of the work,” she said.
South City to Lords crossing, Medical College to Barnaparichay Mall and the areas around Lady Brabourne College, National Medical College and Don Bosco School, and Rashbehari crossing to Hazra crossing, are the new public wi-fi zones where the services are likely to be stretched. Two more zones were added last month — Gariahat-Golpark and the area near Jadavpur 8B bus-stand.
Sources said that it takes a week to set up power connectivity with access points so the system and the wi-fi zones are likely to be active by the end of this month or in the first week of May. Sources further added that the company is extending the service to four more areas because of the increasing demand for data services.
Around five lakh users have availed of the free wi-fi service since it was rolled out at Park Street on 5 February. Park Street has around 230 wi-fi routers online, allowing around 9,200 people to connect to the wi-fi network at a time. The company, which is investing around Rs 3,300 crore to roll out 4G in Bengal, plans to offer the free service as part of a sampling experiment. The official commercial launch will take place later.
