Public Wi-Fi Hotspots Could Slash Mobile Data Costs by 90%
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Wednesday sought public views on allowing non-telecom companies to participate in setting up public Wi-Fi hotspots and said low-cost Wi-Fi access infrastructure could slash Internet rates by up to 90 percent while offering faster speeds.
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The regulator has sought public views by August 10 on a slew of issues including regulatory hurdles, licensing restrictions, business models, interoperability between Wi-Fi networks and delicensing of more mobile airwaves.
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"In this paper, 'public Wi-Fi networks' has broader meaning and not limited to the Wi-Fi hotspot created by licensed TSP/ ISP at public places. There could be small entrepreneurs or even a very small entity which would like to participate in common and shared Wi-Fi network for larger public use," Trai said in its paper on Proliferation of Broadband through Public Wi-Fi Networks.
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Other issues that would be deliberated by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India include policy measures to encourage policy measures required to encourage the deployment of commercial models for city-wide Wi-Fi networks as well as expansion of Wi-Fi networks in remote or rural areas.
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The public views have also been sought on adoption of a "hub-based model" where a central third party Authentication, Authorization and Accounting hub will facilitate interconnection, authentication and payments and who should own and control such hub.
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The regulator said that it is estimated that cost per MB in Wi-Fi Network could be less than 2 paise per MB while consumers on an average are paying around 23 paise per MB for the data usage in the cellular network like 2G, 3G and 4G.
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"This shows that the consumer tariff for data may reduce as much as one-tenth in Wi-Fi compared to mobile data. From the above, it is obvious that deployment of Wi-Fi network will not only enhance the speed of Internet but also it will make data affordable to consumers," Trai said.
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The regulator said that status of Wi-Fi hotspots in India is not encouraging as while the country represents one-sixth of the world population but its share in Wi-Fi hotspots is less than one-thousandth.
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