Bhubaneswar, March 26: The dream of netizens here - the ambitious City Wi-Fi project - is moving closer to reality.
The consultant engaged for the purpose submitted a project report to the government last week for approval.
In its report, Software Technology Park of India (STPI), the consultant for the project, has mentioned that the free Wi-Fi service under the Smart City Mission will cover nearly 400km of city roads with about 5,000 access points.
"The government asked us to undertake a feasibility report of the project and tell them about the result, along with the plan. We submitted the same to the IT department last week for approval," an STPI official said.
In the first stage, the executing agency will install 1,800 access points, which will provide seamless Internet connectivity at no cost for the first 30 minutes or 50MB at 2Mbps per user per session. The price after that would be fixed at a later stage by the executing agency, sources said.
According to the STPI official, once the government approved the plan, they would invite requests for proposal and follow it up with a tender for execution of the project. The STPI team has now pegged the project cost at Rs 126 crore compared to the earlier estimate of Rs 196 crore.
"We plan to power some of the access points with solar energy, which brought down the total project cost. Moreover, other access points would be installed mainly on electric poles, which would charge those," said another STPI official.
Earlier in 2015, STPI had rolled out a trial run of the Wi-Fi project in Bhubaneswar with 10 access points provided by six internet service providers. The users accessed Internet at speeds of 512kbps. The trial run ended after a month, following which the consultant invited suggestions from users about their experience.
Sources said the trial run was successful and many people benefited from the free Wi-Fi service.
"In the trial run, we set a system where a user could register by using their mobile number or email id and access the Wi-Fi service for 30 minutes. At the end of it, we asked them to share their experience," said an official of the consultant.
"I used the free Wi-Fi service provided by Reliance Jio on my campus last year. The speed was so good that I had downloaded nearly 1GB of videos within 30 minutes. Such a service should continue as it helped us save the money we are now spending for Internet packs," said Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology student Satya Ranjan Sahoo.
According to experts, the Wi-Fi service would be necessary for Bhubaneswar in the near future as the city administration planned to bring in more IT-based services for transit operations, parking management, energy response and incident management under the much-hyped Smart City Mission.
Mayor Ananta Narayan Jena said they had planned to introduce an array of smart phone applications for different services. "There will be an intelligent city operation centre where our officials will get complaints and responses from citizens through these IT applications. The Wi-Fi is needed for successful implementation of these as we have put it under the under smart city mission," said Jena.
An official of Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited, the state capital's special purpose vehicle formed to implement the ambitious smart city project, said the government would approve of the plan and forward it to them. Following that, the programme consultant would be put on the job for preparation of the request for proposal.
"We will invite the tenders and then execute and the project. It will take a year after the finalisation of the tender for the project to be completed," the official said.
