State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam will migrate 30,000 of its wifi hotspots to the PM-WANI framework by June, a senior telecom department official on Tuesday said, adding Railways too has an ambitious blueprint for all its future hotspots to be under the framework.
Speaking at Broadband India Forum (BIF) event, Vivek Narayan, DDG (data services) in the Department of Telecom (DoT) mentioned the potential and impact of the PM-WANI wifi hotspots scheme across areas, such as tourism, smart cities and last-mile connectivity in villages.
In a bid to fuel broadband internet proliferation across the country, the government, in December 2020, approved the setting up of public wifi networks and access points by local Kirana and neighbourhood shops through public data offices that will not involve any licence, fee or registration.
The public Wi-Fi Access Network Interface, known as PM-WANI, hold the promise of unleashing a massive wifi revolution in the country. “BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd) would be migrating 30,000 of its hotspots into PM-WANI by June. Railways has already covered around 100 railway stations on PM WANI and is going to cover all its hotspots,” Narayan said.
