Hot spots and hot zones are passé. India is now building unwired cities

Fly into Mumbai six months from now and you’ll be able to work on your laptop all through the tedious drive from the airport to south Mumbai. So you can check your email and surf the Internet — or, in other words, stay connected to the worldwide web as you wind your way through the city’s tiresome traffic snarls.

Mumbai is going to be connected wirelessly. A small, Mumbai-based wireless security solutions company is poised to launch Wireless-Fidelity or wi-fi in the next few weeks in the city. It doesn’t want to be identified as yet because it is waiting for the department of telecommunications to grant it an Internet service provider’s licence. Once the licence comes through, the company will put up boxes on private buildings. Each box will cover an area of 300 metres. Had the local government been involved, the boxes could have been put up on lamp posts and utility poles.

Unlike the Mumbai company, Intel Technology India Private Ltd, which is creating a wi-fi network for Pune, has no reason to be cagey about admitting its close association with the Pune Municipal Corporation to “unwire” the city. Though Surendra Arora, Intel’s director, South Asia (Customer Solutions Group), refuses to share details of the project, he says that part of the first phase of the plan will be implemented by year-end. Adds Nitin Kareer, Pune’s municipal commissioner, “We will have to put in Rs 10-12 crore. Our technology partner is Intel. But we have to still float a tender to invite bids from companies which will actually implement the project.”

Mumbai and Pune are not isolated examples of city administrations pushing to set up wireless networks. Indeed, at least 14 other local city administrations are doing just that.

In Bangalore, Rakesh Singh, director, directorate of information technology (IT) and biotechnology, Karnataka government, the department that is handling the ‘unwire Bangalore’ project, says, “The state government is not investing money in the project — the company that is selected to implement the project will be investing all the money.” Anup Pujari, principal secretary, Karnataka information technology, biotechnology and science & technology department, confirms that the Karnataka government has invited bids from companies to create a city-wide wireless infrastructure. Among them are Microsense, ITI Ltd, Spanco Telesystems, Pronto Network and Keonix.

Other cities that have approached telecom operators such as Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, Reliance Communications and Tata Telecom to help them become wi-fi enabled include Ahmedabad, Chandigrah, Panipat, Rohtak, Hissar, Pinjar and Jaipur.

To be sure, wi-fi is not the best technology for people on the move. WiMax (see box) is a superior technology. But, notes Vijay Kumar BS, general manager, R&D services, MindTree Consulting, “No company to the best of our knowledge has announced WiMAX services as the government has still to sort out the spectrum issue.”

Nor is wi- fi new to Bangalore or to India. Wi-fi hot spots — wireless broadband Internet access areas — at public places such as hotels, restaurants and shopping centres already exist. Microsense has tied up with Café Coffee Day outlets in Bangalore and provides wi-fi at 30 spots in the city. It is currently creating 100 hot spots at similar outlets and hotels in Mumbai. And the Institute of Information Technology at Bangalore (IIT-B) has had a wi-fi-enabled campus since 2003. Says institute director S. Sadagopalan: “At IIT-B, the power of wi-fi (mobility in the true sense) is used to the maximum. Students can work from anywhere, anytime. Wi-fi access in the hostels allows them to submit projects online and access the digital library”.

But hot spots and hot zones are passé. India is now building “unwired cities”. Says the managing director of the company that’s turning Mumbai into a wi-fi city: “Consumers have moved past the ‘get connected’ era of broadband Internet into the ‘stay connected’ one.”

The push towards wi-fi is coming from local administrations in India. Nitin Kareer, Pune’s municipal commisioner, explains why. “We want to unwire Pune for a couple of reasons. One, it is a good branding exercise for the city. When a foreign investor reads four lines about Pune and one of them says that it is an “unwired” city, I am sure it will catch his attention. Two, Internet usage in Pune is among the highest in the country. In fact, laptop penetration in Pune is also on the higher side. The world over, cities are getting unwired. In three years most of India's cities will be unwired.”

In India, Intel’s Arora says that “wi-fi will facilitate education, healthcare, telemedicine and other e-governance services.” Another major advantage a wi-fi enabled city could have is its security systems. The technology helps enhance surveillance possibilities. For instance, among the value added services that the Mumbai wi-fi network company plans to offer is wireless security systems. A jewellery shop owner, for instance, could put up network-based digital cameras (different from a regular CCTV) at his showroom. After the necessary authorisation from the company, the shop could then be viewed live on his laptop anywhere in the city over the wireless network.

At home, meanwhile, as more and more consumer devices such as ACs and refrigerators graduate from their conventional analogue form to a network-based digital form, in a wi-fi city you can “converse” with your AC or fridge any time. “On your way home from work, you could stay connected on the wireless network and give a command to switch on the air conditioner in your lounge,” explains the managing director of the Mumbai company.

He adds that the company will leverage the abilities of the Internet to deliver value-added services such as wireless printing, data storage, security, wireless home entertainment and much else. The company has already started work in south Mumbai and will shortly move to Worli, Bandra, Andheri west and then Saki Naka at Andheri east.

Pune, on the other hand, will use a combination of wi-fi and WiMax technologies to network the city. It is likely to deploy about 3,000 boxes across the city at the cost of about Rs 32 crore. Microsense conducted a Radio Frequency (RF) sweep in Pune — a kind of topographical survey of the city — to establish the need for the number of base stations that provide an active link between the network and the laptop.

N. Kalyan Raman, senior vice-president, Microsense, the man responsible for the survey of Pune, estimates that the city requires about 16 to 18 base stations to offer wireless Internet services in the 400 sq km area. The five leading highways going out to Pune, including the Bombay-Pune highway and the Satara road, will also enjoy wireless Internet access for some distance.

The verdict on the wisdom of creating wi-fi cities is mixed. Some like Intel’s Arora say that laptop computing will drive the move towards unwired cities. A million laptops will be sold this year and laptop prices have crashed. “The segment is growing by 100 per cent a year. Notebooks are priced very aggressively, leading to a huge spurt in sales,” says he.

Yet sceptics caution that laptops in India have barely a three per cent penetration versus 40 per cent in the West. Alok Shende, director, ICT, at consultancy company Frost & Sullivan, thinks that wi-fi services will be confined to offices. “It does not make sense to carpet bomb the city with boxes. It will be very costly,” he adds.

Wi-fi is now expensive —roughly Rs 120 for an hour at airports and Rs 300 an hour at hotels. However, an executive at the company that is unwiring Mumbai says, “We will be launching pre-paid cards in denominations from Rs 100 to Rs 500 to cater to all price points.”

The wi-fi story has just started unfolding in India. So it’s tough to determine how popular these will be. But India’s urban areas clearly will figure on the world map of cities that are hot and unwired.

Fact file

What is wi fi?
Wireless fidelity or wi-fi is a substitute for wired networking. It allows high speed, wire-free access to the Internet if you are close to an access point.

How does wi-fi work?
It converts data into radio frequency signals to connect with the Internet.

What are wi-fi’s advantages?
You can connect to the Internet from any place in the house or office without having to look for a cable to plug into a broadband connection. But wi-fi networks have a limited range — 150 feet indoors and about 300 feet outdoors.

How much do you have to pay for a wi-fi connection?
That will vary from city to city and service provider to service provider. Some offer a wi-fi service for Rs 35 for 15 minutes of connectivity. Companies are expected to launch pre-paid cards in denominations of Rs 200 upwards.

So what’s WiMax then?
WiMAX or Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access is a broadband wireless technology. If wi-fi offers greater speed over shorter distances, WiMAX provides greater coverage. Some cities like Pune are planning to deploy a mix of wi-fi and WiMax technologies.