Citywide WiFi Planned by BMC in a 50-Crore Plan For Mumbai

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has brought forward a plan, which, if implemented, would allow anyone to use WiFi on their compatible laptops or mobile phones. This initiative by the BMC is a public-private partnership of sorts, in which the BMC plans to cover the entire city with WiFi coverage, albeit not free.



Once the city is WiFi enabled, it will enable any user who has a WiFi enabled device to surf the web from any location in the city. Once he is connected, he will be able to move around in the city at his own will, without worrying about any wires. The project was only recently declared ‘technically feasible’ by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), which is BMC’s consultant for their e-governance project too. The project, which has been in the pipeline for the last couple of years, was initially limited to the BMC Headquarters, ward offices, zonal offices and the civic hospitals.



The BMC plans to invite tenders in a month’s time for the project. According to the plan, BMC will only be responsible to erect the towers and the infrastructure required for the technology. The rest will be done by the service providers, who in turn will give a part of their profits to BMC. The details of the profit share have not been finalized yet. Revenue will be generated from the subscribers, although BMC maintains that this will be cheaper than other such services.



BMC is following Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal corporation who have planned the same in their area and the tenders for the same have already been floated. Anil Diggikar, Additional Municipal Commissioner for the BMC was quoted:

In Mumbai, it will be a larger scheme (compared to Pimpri-Chinchwad) as the city covers an area of 437 sq km, almost three times greater than PCMC that is just 171 sq km. We do not have to spend anything, but we only have to set up the towers. The service providers will put in the money and some part of the profits they make will be given to the BMC”

The BMC hopes to speed up its e-governance initiative with this move. Senior Officials from the governing body said that such a network would make it easy for the citizens to communicate with each other and the civic body, thus making communications easier and processing time shorter. Cyber experts, on the other hand, see this move from a different perspective. According to them, this would place Mumbai among the top technologically advanced cities in the world.



If the plan does indeed go through, it would be interesting to see how it would be implemented. According to me, it would really help if there was a single system of managing the service. Something on the lines of Mobile Recharge coupons should be implemented, wherein each user will have his own account and he is charged as per usage. We will also need to wait and see what speeds would be implemented along with the service.



But wait, if the city becomes WiFi enabled, what happens to the city’s WiMax providers?

Source : WATBlog