Community Model of Wi-Fi Hotspots: coming soon to a store near you
The
neighbourhood grocery store may well become the first port of call for using
data services on mobile devices, especially in the hinterland where data
connectivity is patchy and laying optic fibre cable not feasible.
The
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India is finalising a recommendation to allow a
community model of wi-fi hotspots that users can connect to seamlessly in
return for a payment to the hotspot hosts, in a bid to improve India’s poor
broadband connectivity levels.
It
is also developing a proof– of concept to enable people to seamlessly latch on
to any wi-fi hotspot they come across, without a one-time password or credit
card payment hassles.
Recommendations
“We
believe that the community model of wi-fi hotspots will really work. A grocery
shop fellow is allowed to sell the bandwidth on his wi-fi hotspot and
people are easily able to get onto it, use it to make digital transactions and
satisfy their other data needs,” TRAI chairman R.S. Sharma said on Wednesday,
adding that a recommendation to this effect is expected to be sent to the
telecom ministry later this month.
Calling
Data the new currency, the TRAI chief said that India needed to do a lot of
work on improving data connectivity as it fares even worse than countries such
as Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Vietnam on fixed line broadband infrastructure.
“This
will create a wonderful system because then that grocery shop fellow will be
able to sell his goods and people will be able to use the data to make
transactions also digitally,” Mr. Sharma said at an IAMAI event.
Source | The Hindu | 9 February 2017
Regards
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior
Manager @ Library
Khaitan & Co
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