Cabinet Approves "PM Wani," Indian Government's Public Wi-Fi venture

In a bid to propagate broadband penetration into unserved parts of India, the Indian Government has approved a new public Wi-Fi plan called the "PM Wani."The new project aims to provide Public Wi-Fi hotspots at a large number of restaurants, grocery stores, hotels, and other places across the country.

The project, named Prime Minister Wi-Fi Access Network Interface (PM Wani), was initially recommended by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) in March 2017."Covid pandemic has necessitated delivery of stable and high-speed broadband data services to an increasingly large number of subscribers, including in areas which do not have 4G mobile coverage. This can be achieved by deployment of public Wi-Fi," the Government said in a release.

PM Wani will be set up by public data office aggregators (PDOAs) through public data offices (PDOs). The public Wi-Fi networks will not incur any licensing or registration fee. The private companies can set up public Wi-Fi hotspots at desired locations. Apart from the companies, local shop owners or individuals can also take bandwidth from their service providers, establish and operate Wi-Fi access points, and provide broadband services. PDOs will act as"facilitators" between service providers and users.

A PDOA will be an aggregator of PDOs that will oversee functions relating to authorization and accounting of Wi-Fi connections, said the official. A person who wants to use public Wi-Fi can use the PMWani app to pay for the amount of data he wants to use. The App will act as a platform to register users and discover Wani-compliant Wi-Fi hotspots in an area and display them on the App.