India to have a million WiFi hotspots by Dec 2019

Addressing the India Mobile Congress (IMC), one of the biggest marquee mobile, internet, and technology events for South and South-East Asia, he also unveiled the National Frequency Allocation Plan 2018 (NFAP), which is considered a pioneering roadmap for the Indian digital communications industry.

The NFAP released 605 MHz of licence-exempt spectrum in 5GHz band for Wireless Access Services and Radio Local Area Networks outdoors, to meet the ever-growing appetite for data.

This compares to the current figure of 50 MHz since 2007. 

IMC 2018, with the theme of ‘New Digital Horizons – Connect, Create, Innovate,’ began on a grand scale at Aero City, New Delhi with over 300 companies, 20 countries participating in this prestigious event in the Asia Pacific region. 

He said Bharat Wi-Fi, a country-wide common inter-operable platform of one million Wi-Fi Hotspots, owned and operated by Telecom Service Providers, Internet Service Providers and Virtual Network Operators will be rolled out across the country. This initiative allows consumers to access Wi-Fi Hotspots of any of the partnering operators. 

The NFAP also offered over 30 licence-exempt bands for Short Range Devices (SRDs), Ultra-Wideband Devices (UWDs) and additional spectrum for M2M services, creating opportunities for the public to enjoy benefits from technologies and enabling the industry to build domestic manufacturing ecosystem. India signalled its spectrum plans for 5G services aspiring to adopt the next generation technology as a leading market.

In a major policy initiative, which will give impetus to small and medium entrepreneurship in telecom sector, DoT decided to deduct payments for resources taken by Virtual Network Operators (VNOs) from telecom service providers, thereby reducing levies payable by VNOs. This avoids double taxation at various stages.

He said the Department of telecommunications (DoT) is finalising a concrete plan to enable homegrown technologies for trials in the field on a large scale to enable the development and the scaling up of the products and services.

Day 1 of the conference has witnessed many rousing announcements by the industry and demos of the state of the art 5G applications by global OEMs. This is expected to generate investments of approximately over Rs2,000 crore and create over 3 lakh jobs.

Towards this various companies have started demonstaration projects to test and verify applicability of 5G services.

Samsung and R Jio has started 5G live demo of the Skyship Drone, which will have applications in public safety and surveillance, agriculture monitoring and disaster response.

Ericsson and R Jio has undertaken demonstration of connected car on a 5G network, which will test environmental quality, reduce traffic collisions and fatality rates, driver safety and data processing and management.

Ericsson and Airtel are demonstrating drone flying on 5G, surveillance and logistics to verify autonomous drone applications in  mission-critical applications, disaster management, emergency deliveries, medicine and remote surveillance.

Nokia’s state-of-the-art manufacturing unit in Chennai will start large scale manufacturing of 5G New Radio enabling made in India for the World.

Ericsson started exporting 5G ready telecom equipment from its manufacturing facility in Pune, to global markets. Its state-of-the-art facility will cater to enabling made in India for the world

BSNL, Airtel, JIo, Vodafone idea have joined hands to install a million WiFi hotspots across India in the next 12 months. Interoperability across different WiFi networks thereby enabling smooth experience for subscribers, as customers will be able to use the data plan taken from any TSP for all the WiFi Hotspots deployed across India. Besides offering consumer delight, this industry initiative will create additional 3 lakh jobs.