Absence of incentives, poor awareness hobble rural WiFi scheme PM-WANI

Scheme central to government's plans to create up to 10 mn public WiFi hotspots by Dec

Nearly two years after it was launched, the government has been able to activate 132,000 hotspots as part of the Prime Minister’s WiFi Access Network Interface (PM-WANI). The scheme is central to the government’s plans to create up to 10 million public WiFi hotspots in India by the end of this year.

However, lack of interest in many areas, primarily due to low financial incentives, has contributed to the hesitancy in adopting the scheme, say officials apprised of the situation.

On the other hand, the sluggish pace of migrating WiFi hotspots to the PM-WANI network by state-run entities, such as Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) and the Indian Railways, has also impeded progress, they add.

Aiming at massively expanding the public WiFi network in the country and providing low-cost mass digital connectivity to the underserved in rural areas and the urban poor, the flagship scheme was launched by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) in December 2020. 

According to the Public WiFi Partners (PWP) policy, local micro entrepreneurs in rural areas can open public data offices (PDOs) with BSNL, to make WiFi services available at affordable rates to the rural populace.

As of November 29, the total number of public WIFI hotspots registered on the network stood at 132,508, reveals data from the dashboard on the PM-WANI portal.

It shows 136 PDO aggregators (PDOAs) having gone live on the network.

PDOAs provide aggregation services, such as authorisation and accounting to PDOs, thereby facilitating them in providing services to the end-consumer.

Earlier this year, senior DoT officials had underscored the need for creating 10 million hotspots through the year as envisaged in the National Digital Communications Policy target, potentially generating 20-30 million job opportunities in the small- and medium-scale sectors.

Challenges aplenty

“As is often the case, schemes with a rural slant take more time. Local populations need to be convinced to adapt to new technical models. We have received reports of many rural participants complaining about financial incentives remaining undersized. We are looking into it,” says a senior DoT official. 

Earlier this year, officials had emphasised that BSNL would be migrating 30,000 of its hotspots to PM-WANI by June. Sources say the exercise has taken much longer than expected.

For adopting the PM-WANI framework, BSNL registered itself as PDOA, while also integrating its core equipment with the technical systems of the Centre for Development of Telematics.

“BSNL’s foray into the scheme is expected to boost the telecommunications (telecom) service provider’s (TSP) chances of reaching a wider customer base. It will also help it leapfrog over the three private TSPs, in terms of establishing digital networks in the rural hinterland. But movement on the issue has been slower than planned,” says the official, quoted earlier.

Meanwhile, the Railways was also expected to migrate its WiFi network – present across 6,102 stations with a total of nearly 18,000 hotspots - by the end of June this year.

RailTel, a public sector undertaking under the Railways in charge of the exercise, had announced this in May, while launching the PM-WANI-based access of its public WiFi services across 100 railway stations.
 

Rural game changer

The government had bet on the scheme after the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India had pointed out that public hotspots held an important place in the last-mile delivery of broadband to users, given that WiFi is much easier to scale than adding new long-term evolution towers. It also allows for offloading from telecom networks to ease congestion, and will be crucial when the next billion Internet of Things devices come online.

DoT has classified PDOs as retail hotspot locations, which include local grocers and the unassuming roadside tea stalls.

“PM-WANI will be the ultimate example of the ease of doing business in a sector where bureaucracy and high licences/fees have held back new entrants. It is now easy for even a chaiwallah to register online as a service provider, opening up new income avenues,” says another official.

According to government estimates, public WiFi systems on the WANI architecture can lead to a 10 per cent rise in net penetration, which, in turn, can lead to a 1.4 per cent increase in gross domestic product. 

It can also result in a transformative scale-up of World Wide Web in rural India, given the low internet penetration of 37 per cent in 2021, according to a report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India and the overall low rural teledensity of 57.7 per cent as of September.