WI-FI: Crown for Royal City

This Dusshera festive season, Mysore became the only city in India to become

completely Wi-Fi enabled. The entire city area spanning 130 sq km has gone

wireless. The Mysore 'hot zone' was made possible by the efforts of a local

ISP called WIFyNet, which has erected three towers at different corners of the

city. Karnataka's IT and BT secretary Shankaralinge Gowda inaugurated the

wireless service on 11 October. This makes Mysore the only city in the world,

apart from Jerusalem, to boast of such a feat.

According to Shankar Prasad, WIFyNet director, "We wanted to showcase

this technology in Mysore and hope to replicate this model in other cities in

India." A central tower, which acts as a central access point, and two

other towers form the framework of the wireless infrastructure. Each tower costs

around Rs 20 lakh and this investment has been borne by the company. The 108

Mbps network runs on a secure WEP (wired equivalent privacy) protocol.

Wi-Fi gets off the ground in Mysore. Shankarlinge Gowda, secretary for IT and BT, Govt of Karnataka along with Dhananjaya, director (technical), JSS Maha Vidyapeeta, Mysore doing the honors. He is flanked by WifiyNet director, Shankar Prasad and company executives

To log on to the Wi-Fi network, individuals pay an installation deposit of Rs

7,000 that covers access hardware like USB access device, PCI card with external

antenna, or an outdoor bridge (in case signals are weak). In addition users pay

a monthly rental of around Rs 900.

Corporate users can avail of suitable plans depending on the required

bandwidth by signing a QoS agreement with WIFyNet. The service provider would

then install a directional antenna to assure the requisite signal strength and

throughput. Prasad said that the service is slowly but surely gaining traction

among enterprises in Mysore. "We are servicing a medical transcription

company called Ezmed for which non-stop Internet is mission critical to their

operations."

Next on the radar is Kushalnagar in Coorg, located in hilly terrain and a

potential hub due to a Tibetan monastery and a huge tourist inflow. Prasad said,

"We plan to build south India's longest Internet link spanning 96 kms

from Mysore to Kushalnagar. Providing Wi-Fi capabilities in a tough terrain like

Coorg would be an excellent technology showcase." WIFyNet, which is a

registered ISP in Mysore, is trying to migrate its subscribers from wired to

wireless Internet. "Right now, we have around 50 active subscribers and

plan to increase to a 1,000 by March 2005," informed Prasad. He added that

the number of towers would be increased as the user base went up. "Right

now, around 80 percent of the city is covered," he said.

WIFyNet is trying to sign on local engineering colleges, medical

transcription companies, and software companies for the service and is ambitious

about its plans to take Wi-Fi to other cities. "We want to go for a

franchisee business model and will initially look at the south Indian market. We

will start looking for suitable business partners starting December this

year," Prasad said.

Mysore's big Wi-Fi leap comes as the Karnataka government is promoting the

city as a favorable secondary destination for IT companies after the capital hub

of Bangalore.

Priya Padmanabhan,

CyberMedia News

Delhi's Pragati maidan Wi-Fied

The entire trade fair ground at Pragati Maidan, India's largest exhibition

venue, has been Wi-Fied by Airtel broadband and telephone services. The users

had access to speeds of up to 128 kbps.

For those who did not already subscribe to the Wi-Fi services, coupons were

available for anywhere between Rs 50 and Rs 2,500.