Bhubaneswar: Ahead of the Men's Hockey World Cup scheduled in November, residents here will have seamless free Internet connection in various parts of the city.
The administration here is gearing up to introduce Wi-Fi services in several priority corridors. The network will cover a total stretch of 80km.
"The city will have WiFi coverage by the end of October. The network will be accessible at 300 points across Bhubaneswar," said mayor Ananta Narayan Jena.
American multinational conglomerate Honeywell will implement the project. Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited, the special purpose vehicle executing the smart city projects, will monitor the project implementation in the city.
A pilot city Wi-Fi project was rolled out in 2015 at five locations for a few months. Later, with the advent of the smart cities mission, the project got incorporated in it.
In the new plan, the Software Technology Park of India has prepared the project report for the city Wi-Fi, which, once completed, will have 5,000 access points.
"We had taken inputs from the trial run of the service and amended the project report accordingly. Now, we are going to roll out the first phase of the project with 300 access points. It will be expanded to other parts of the city in later stages," said Jena.
Within the smart city proposal, the IT infrastructure will include intelligent traffic signal and control system, common payment card and master system integrator (MSI).
While traffic signal system has been done by Envoys Electronics Private Limited for Rs 14.69 crore, the common payment card will be done by ICICI Bank for Rs 19.19 crore.
The Intelligent Communication and Operations Management Centre (ICOMC) and MSI would cost around Rs 700 crore.
The MSI would include all IT-based solutions including the Wi-Fi networking across Bhubaneswar.