Govt to launch app for easy access to public WiFi
The Department of Telecommunications will launch a mobile application which would enable singleclick access to any public Wi-Fi hotspot in the country through one-time login and authentication, at the India Mobile Congress on Thursday.
This, the government believes, will offer users cheaper and faster internet compared to mobile data and also boost the proliferation of public Wi-Fi hotspots in the country in line with the objectives of the national digital communications policy approved by the Union cabinet last month. Additionally, this would also enable offloading of mobile data traffic on to Wi-Fi networks, thereby easing network congestion in high density areas which could also potentially reduce the menace of call drops.
“The app has been designed so that an user can get on-board the public Wi-Fi network through one-time authentication and doesn’t have to repeat the entire process for accessing the next Wi-Fi hotspot. The design also ensures back-end inter-operability between telecom service providers which means that if I am a mobile customer of a particular operator, I could seamlessly access Wi-Fi hotspots run by other operators as well,” a person aware of the development said requesting anonymity. The government, in the national digital communications policy, has targeted deployment of 5 million public Wi-Fi hotspots by 2020 and 10 million by 2022 through a National Broadband Mission, apart from implementing a “Fibre First Initiative” to take fibre to the home.
NEWDELHI: