Students in state-run colleges will by next year be able to surf the Internet on campus free of cost.

Government run colleges, including those in Patna, will be equipped with Wi-fi facility by February next year.

The information technology department has selected Larsen & Toubro through a competitive bid to install the facility in 276 educational institutions.

L&T will deliver the service using private operator Airtel's bandwidth.

"The department has set a target of launching the Wi-fi facility by February next year," IT secretary Rahul Singh said on Thursday. "The agency which has received the tender will carry out all the formalities such as setting up access points."

Each institution will have an Internet connection speed of 10mbps (megabytes per second) and on an average there will be 15 access points, including 10 indoor access points and five outdoor access points.

Two companies, L&T and Sify, were selected after technical bidding; in the final process, L&T which had submitted lowest bidding price was awarded the tender. Though the Wi-fi services will be provided at all educational institution including engineering, management and medical colleges, the command centre will be located in Patna.

As the Wi-fi service's primary focus will be to provide Internet connections to students for education purpose, social networking sites and some sites will be blocked. A sum of Rs 199 crore will be spent on the project and the company executing it will be responsible for maintaining the facility for five years.

Free Wi-Fi connectivity for students is one of the seven resolves of chief minister Nitish Kumar. It is aimed at making students tech savvy, which will contribute to the technological development of the state.

Many colleges already have Wi-fi facility. For example, Magadh Mahila College has Wi-fi on campus, but the college administration has restricted the users by putting a password.

Akriti Sinha, a BA student at Magadh Mahila College, said: "We have Wi-fi service at our college but only those students studying BCA or BBA have received the password to access the facility."

IIT-Patna and NIT-Patna have also been already providing free Wi-fi connectivity to students for more than three years.

Saket Kumar, a student of NIT-Patna, said: "When we took admission at NIT-Patna in 2013, the institutions had Wi-fi on campus and in the hostel. At present, the institute is installing local area network (LAN) at the hostel for high-speed Internet connections."

The colleges that already have the facility will be asked to discontinue their services and will be asked to use the Wi-fi services of the IT department, Singh said.