Free wi-fi project likely to roll out soon: Sources

Moving a step forward towards implementing its pre-poll commitment of providing free wi-fi connectivity across the city, the AAP government is seriously mulling to bring in the Cabinet for the  approval of the wi-fi project proposal which is being expected by the third week of September.

The Delhi government’s Information and Technology Department is busy in the process of identifying 1,000 places along with the ground level survey such as public places, residential areas, shopping places and commercial areas, universities, colleges and rural belts etc.

Delhi government had already received a suggested list of interested persons, organisations and stakeholders on the business models and technological strategies.

“ Technical and feasibility study on these issues have been completed by the wi-fi Task Force of the Delhi Dialogue Commission and the IT department of the Delhi government,” said a senior officer.

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is monitoring the wi-fi project himself and he has consulted Google, Facebook, Ericsson and Vodafone. According to Delhi Government sources, the tender document is almost ready, but the Chief Minister is persistent in asking about the viability of wi-fi. It was also added by the sources that Kejriwal wants no mistake in the implementation of the project. <g data-gr-id="38">Kejrwal</g>, in no <g data-gr-id="42">way</g> wants to take failures like in the cases of wi-fi implementations in Connaught place and Khan market, which were rolled out of the services owing to several technical and logistical issues.

According to sources, if everything works fine, the project will be tendered in October this year. The Delhi government is likely to be put up the  proposal of the same in September. 

According to the proposal of the wi-fi hotspot, a minimum internet speed of 512 Kbps will be made mandatory. The IT department is pondering over fixing the limit of  data usage to 50 MB per day. If any one exhausts the daily limit then the service can be availed by paying for the extra usage.

If any user is interested in watching videos, video-chats and downloading <g data-gr-id="30">contents ,</g> they will have to pay extra money. The government would provide Free wi-fi services only for browsing websites, social media, email, WhatsApp etc.