How Free Municipal Wi-Fi Can Change the Face of Delhi

By Zia Askari

Rather than ridiculing the effort of Kejriwal government to connect the entire city with wireless internet, we should appreciate the kind of services and new age applications which might usher in a completely new era of empowerment for the masses.

When Arvind Kejriwal promised free Wi-Fi connectivity to the city of New Delhi – it is like giving a world of new age opportunities in the hands of ‘Aam Aadmi’.
While there are many people who have already started criticizing the Aam Aadmi Party for making such a bold promise, they must understand that it could very well become of the technology led success stories for modern India. Let us take a closer look at how these opportunities can be realized with the help of city-wide Wi-Fi also known as Municipal Wi-Fi.

To start with, let us understand what Wi-Fi is and where it comes from. Wi-Fi is a local area wireless inter-linking technology that allows any electronic device (including laptops and smartphones among others) with a Wi-Fi chip to participate in communications using 2.4 GHz radio bands.

The best part about this technology is also the part which makes it cheap - the fact that it uses unlicensed airwaves or spectrum – this is quite different when compared with the other licensed telecom GSM or CDMA airwaves.

This is perhaps one of the biggest reasons why a mass scale roll out of Wi-Fi can do wonders for covering city wide areas, because there is no monitory involvement when it comes to airwaves – the only investment needed comes in the form of purchasing connectivity equipment.

The Era of Municipal Wireless

While we have all heard about Wi-Fi in the context of hotspots springing around big shopping malls, railway stations, airports etc, the concept of Municipal Wireless Network goes beyond a particular point and involves turning an entire city into a Wireless Access Zone, with the ultimate goal of making wireless access to the Internet a universal service, always on for the common masses. It is just like laying a reliable railway line that covers lanes and bylanes, which is always on and available for trains of data to pass over it.

This can be done by providing municipal broadband connectivity via Wi-Fi to large parts of the municipal area by deploying a wireless mesh network. The typical deployment design in this scenario will use hundreds of Wi-Fi routers deployed outdoors, often on existing poles. The operator of such a network acts as a wireless internet service provider and intertwines all the city points in a single thread of Wi-Fi connectivity.

It is also very important to note that such municipal Wi-Fi networks go far beyond the existing hotspot connectivity available near public places such as some coffee shops or shopping malls. The basic idea of enveloping an entire city with wireless service is that it is far more economical for the larger interest of masses to get this kind of service as a utility from the government side, rather than to have individual households and businesses pay private firms for such a service.

Additionally, as being experienced within the global cities, such networks hold great potential for enhancing city management and public safety. Free public Wi-Fi in Delhi should be seen as a social service to those who cannot afford private internet connectivity services.

How Free is Free Wi-Fi

In fact today there are 57 cities in the world that have free Wi-Fi available for their citizens. Government in these cities has invested in Wi-Fi in the hope that such empowerment will lead to better job opportunities to their underserved populations and also initiating a new wave of innovation available to the common masses.

As the newly formed government in Delhi is trying to move towards fulfilling its promises, there are opponents who have qualms about how free it would be? There are many developed geographies including places such as Singapore, Germany or even US where in some places municipal Wi-Fi is delivered free for a minimum time ranging from 30 minutes to one hour and after that the service is charged as per the usage.

New Delhi can surely look forward to a similar model where first 30 minutes can be free of charge. The sheer idea of empowering masses with the power of Internet connectivity is exciting enough and today this holds special significance as this is s smartphone age where most of the phones carry a Wi-Fi chip, acting as automated bacons, searching for the best Wi-Fi network signals.

Whether it is education, banking, tourism, transportation, e-governance or even healthcare, imagine how easy it would be have specific applications helping the common masses, if everybody is connected on a single Wi-Fi grid.

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