Karnataka, Telangana to join WBA Connected Advisory Board

NEW DELHI: Karnataka and Telangana have evinced interest in joining the WBA (Wireless Broadband Alliance) Connected Advisory Board, which will help the states to curate their wi-fi vision.

Delhi was the first city to join the board and presently, it is working in association with WBA and ecosystem partners to develop connected city plans and blue prints and create public-private ecosystems for collaboration.

The Delhi government is rolling out 3,000 hotspots and has plans to cover, colleges, villages and unauthorized colonies through wi-fi.

“In the days to come, we will see number of cities coming out with more detailed plans around wi-fi and we are also going to see licensed and unlicensed technology coming together and so that convergence will accelerate, become more real. People today are treating licensed and unlicensed as one network on which the calling will happen. We would expect the same to happen in India as well,” Shrikant Shenwai, CEO, WBA, said.

Meanwhile, LTE on unlicensed is another interesting area. If we can combine LTE with unlicensed network, its capacity and quality increased, he added.

WBA founded the Connected City Advisory Board to help deliver the vision of connected cities being pursued by a growing number of cities from around the world. Today, the board has over 20 cities around the world, including Delhi.

It provides a platform for city managers and CIOs to knowledge share and create best practices with their counterparts in other cities and also determine the best way to leverage public-private partnerships.

Karnataka and Telangana will join the Connected City Advisory Board during the second chapter of Vision Forum in Delhi on January 22.

Last year, WBA introduced its first initiative in India to discuss the transformational role of wi-fi in Connected City Deployments by bringing together close to 200 executives and experts from around the world, including Indian network operators, technology providers, senior government officials and regulators.

WBA will also be celebrating World Wi-Fi day on June 20.