NEW DELHI: Riding on realty, retail and other infrastructure sectors boom, including the Indian Railways, the adaptation of Wi-Fi in India is set to increase massively.
After witnessing a 100% increase in the number of hotspots (locations that are Wi-Fi enabled, where one can log on to the Net without using cables) to about 1,600 in 2007-08, this number is expected to increase by several multiple times during the current year.
A study by the Global Wi-Fi Alliance has estimated that Wi-Fi market in India will grow to $891million by 2011-12. This figure includes WLAN gear, networking tools, professional services, Wirless Internet Service Provider (WISP) revenues, Wi-Fi applications that are being built for niche sectors, handheld terminals, and system integration services, but does not include chipsets, laptops, PDAs, cell phone handsets and other devices.
According to Global Wi-FI Alliance senior marketing manager Kelly Davis-Felner, the addressable base of Wi-Fi-enabled client devices is growing steadily in India since about 90 - 95% of notebooks being sold today had a built-in Wi-Fi capability.
“We have noticed that a small but growing number of Indian mobile subscribers are going in for handsets with Wi-Fi capability. A highly mobile, young generation increasingly expects near-always-on mobile broadband connectivity and is willing to pay for it. These factors will drive increased use of Wi-Fi in India moving forward,” Ms Davis-Felner added.
The global Wi-FI alliance’s study also points out that exploding real-estate market growing at 30% annually, where entire new townships are coming up in tier-2 and tier-3 towns, coupled with the fact that organized retail was expected to add about 220 million square feet of space by 2010, provided the perfect platform for Wi-Fi to take off in India.
More so, considering that the growth in commercial office space requirements is led by the burgeoning outsourcing and information technology (IT) industry-for example, IT and ITeS alone is estimated to require 150 million square feet across urban India by 2010.
Other factors that will ignite Wi-Fi in India include large-scale developments of hotspots by corporates, telcos and PSUs. For instance, the Indian Railways recently announced that all important rail-routes between metros would be made Wi-Fi-enabled together with 50 railway stations (20 of which to be completed by March, 2008).
Tata Communications, which has already rolled out rolled out 350 plus public hotspot locations is set to increase the chain to about 1,000 this year in 2008.
Similarly, BSNL is setting up 100,000 Community Service Centres which will be carrying a powerful info kiosk that has Internet connectivity, plans to make a significant number of these Wi-Fi enabled.
“While new technology solutions (PON, WiMAX, ADSL) will continue to address growing demand for broadband in India, Wi-Fi will continue to play a strong role in sub-tending the last mile to multiple end-points - slashing costs, improving inventory management in organized retail, enabling faster check-ins at airport counters, medical services in rural India, creating jobs in a rural BPOs, spreading education in hinterlands of India and enriching quality of life for many,” the Wi-Fi Alliance study adds.
Expressing confidence in Wi-Fi uptake in India, Ms Davis-Felner added: The biggest strengths of Wi-Fi are its ubiquity (virtually every notebook shipped is Wi-Fi equipped and an increasing number of mobile phones carry the capability now), its maturity as a technology and the demonstrated interoperability it provides today.
Wi-Fi’s complementary nature with a variety of back-haul technologies including DSL, WiMAX or FTTX, make it a natural ally to most service providers in extending the ‘last-mile’ of connectivity to the user.”
Source : EconomicTimes
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