How Realistic is the Dream of Free Wi-Fi in Indian Villages?

Srinivas Moorthy is a senior professional from telecom Industry.

By Srinivas Moorthy

India is standing at the crossroads of digital revolution. The right way forward in this journey is rural connectivity. There is a need and urgency for establishing free Wi-Fi zones in the villages that can help in achieving significant level of internet penetration in the rural areas. It is proposed to give an acronym “Vi-Fi” to India’s free Wi-Fi plan for villages.

With several government initiatives, “Digital India” movement is gathering momentum. Factors like availability of affordable Wi-Fi-enabled mobile devices, large youth population quick to adopt digital technologies, fast growing aggregator services, urge of e–commerce companies to expand markets more deeply and availability of wider e-governance services are further fuelling this momentum. Post demonetization, Digital India has gained greater significance as the government is pressing ahead to make the people embrace cashless digital economy.

Before the demonetization episode in November 2016, the popular topic among the political circle was the free Wi-Fi zones. There has been a series of inaugurations of free Wi-Fi zones across various cities by political leaders to showcase the commitment of a digitally vibrant India. While free Wi-Fi zones are a welcome step for Digital India, the slow progress in rural connectivity is a cause for worry. Lower percentage of internet adoption in rural India is resulting in wider digital divide between rural and urban India. Some of the places where free Wi-Fi zone has been implemented are Taj Mahal, Agra, MG road at Bangalore, Connaught place, Delhi, Railway Station, Varanasi and Shivaji Park, Mumbai among others.

The Great Divide between the Rural and Urban India

Unfortunately, we don’t hear of any village being added to the free Wi-Fi plan. Perhaps it is because of the challenges involved in reaching the connectivity and less publicity opportunity associated with such locations.

India tops the global offline population followed by China and Indonesia. These three countries alone account for 46% of the global offline population. India also stands 2nd in the online population of the world, next to China only because of both countries have a large population. But one has to see the geographical and economical spread of this online population to understand the reality.

According to India’s census data 2011 available on the United Nation`s website, total population of India is 120.57 crore out of which 68% lives in rural India and 32 % live in urban India. Grafting the TRAI internet subscription data over the census demographic data helps to understand the widening gap between the urban and rural internet access.

Let us apply a similar calculation to the internet using age group of 15-54 year-olds of India. Out of 48.01 crore, only 6.24 crore of rural India and out of 29.43 crore, about 17.36 crore of urban Indian population has access to internet. The ratio between connected and unconnected stands at 1:7 for rural and 17:12 for urban population.

Despite Rural India having 62% of total population, its internet penetration is just one fourth of the total internet population of India. (Refer 15-54 age group population chart).

This situation needs immediate attention as a large population living in rural India is deprived of the internet access, that too when their learning capabilities are at peak. A decade of young generation will miss out access to the internet world and its benefits. We as a country stand to lose heavily on the socio-economic development and it will take years to catch up.

Presently providing connectivity to each household of rural India appears to be a difficult task, Facilitating the villages with free Wi- Fi Zones could be the disruptive move for inclusive digital India, Success stories of STD PCO era, DTH moment or the Mobile telephony magic can be repeated.

The government has to meet these needs of providing basic social facilities like school education, postal services, roads, electricity, sanitation, health and clean water etc. Wi-Fi to every rural home of India needs to be supplied.

Challenges of Power and Connectivity

The common infra challenge in enabling rural broadband is Power and Connectivity (P&C). Fortunately, with the advancement of technology both the challenges are addressable today.

Following are the ways in which this can be achieved:

Solar Power: With the continued efforts by the government on the renewable energy, solar power has become an easily available and affordable technology, which can be used for powering the village Wi-Fi spots 24x7.

Connectivity: Advancement of satellite technology with high throughput satellites availability, today V-SATs are capable of delivering more than 50 Mbps per site, matching the speed challenges of terrestrial links. Since V-SATs are feasible everywhere, we can overcome challenges like delay, high cost of laying fiber and maintenance, etc. Further, radio links options can be used for reaching the connectivity to the Vi-Fi spots from nearest telecom and BharatNet fiber point of presence wherever feasible.

The Idea of Vi-Fi

Vi-Fi can be implemented at any location with self-sustainable pole similar to lamp posts equipped with a feasible and suitable backhaul connectivity equipments (fiber termination/ RF/Satellite dish) along with solar panel with battery systems, lightening arrester and Wi-Fi Access Point (AP) for creating Wi-Fi hotspot to provide internet access coverage to an area of 100 meter.

Vi-Fi Zones can be the modern lamp-posts. Free data access to everyone with Aadhar number and device may be given a daily and monthly quota with fair user policy (FUP) and top up, recharge facility for extended use. The recent recommendation statement from TRAI to provide 100 MB for every user can be implemented in this model.

The Vi-Fi concept is possible to reach all 6.5 lakh villages with available technology instead of waiting endlessly for a large project like BharatNet to get rolled out. Vi-Fi will give the opportunity for every Indian to access internet world and associated services.

The government needs to support the Vi-Fi concept, the shared resource for the village communities and encourage building Vi-Fi through all sources. It has to be given same priority as the policies of individual ministries, private participation, universal service obligation funding, Members of Parliament’s local area development scheme (MPLAD) or corporate social responsibility (CSR), or building convenience facilities for people.

The government needs to set up a cell to facilitate Vi-Fi initiative and make necessary regulatory provisions so that contribution from any individual or an organization for setting up community Vi-Fi is encouraged, thus allowing inorganic growth in the digital India progress. Such a cell should be part of the PMO office to overcome all the hurdles generally faced by various programs due to multiple interventions.

Let’s Vi-Fi for inclusive Digital India!

The author, Srinivas Moorthy is a senior professional from telecom Industry. The views expressed in the column are personal.