The government of India is working towards establishing a massive public Wi-Fi ecosystem. The project hopes to deploy over 10 lakh or 1 million active public hotspots for internet connectivity.
The Modi administration is working with network giants like Jio, Airtel to add over 10 lakh hotspots in prime locations like markets, malls etc.
India currently has close to 3.7 lakh hotspots and the remaining are expected to finish before December 2019.
The reason why the government is pushing for such massive inclusion of public hotspots is to give users an opportunity to connect once and use the service where ever they go, making it more seamless.
The files are with the home ministry awaiting security clearance.
However these public hotspots won’t be free. The first 15 to 20 minutes will be free or there would be data restrictions and finally users will be prompted to pay token amounts for further usage.
India has made possible the lowest data plans for users around the world. The costs for per Gigabyte of data in India costs US$ 0.05 while same could costs US$ 2.5 in the United States.