Wi-Fi -hot and finally here

Everyone "� the Tatas, the Bharti group, Satyam Infoway, to name a few "� is leaping into wi-fi

You are a Delhi-based executive jetsetting your way to your company's headquarters tonight in London to make a key presentation.

But on the way to the airport you suddenly remember that you have forgotten to download information from the internet to update your presentation.

Not to worry. You can now connect your laptop wirelessly to the internet from any place at the airport's emigration hall as you wait to board the flight.

All you will have to do is to walk to a Satyam Infoway (Sify) outlet at the airport and subscribe to the company's wireless fidelity (wi-fi) service.

Sure, the service will be priced "� you'll pay Rs 60 for an hour of surfing.

You'll have to borrow a wi fi PC card (if you already don't have it in-built in your laptop), punch in a password and, presto, the world of high speed internet will be at your fingertips.

You can now download information speeds that are nearly five to six times faster than your dial-up connection at home.

Sify is among the few Indian internet service providers (ISPs) and telecom companies that are taking their first, tentative steps to offering wi-fi services.

The Delhi-based Bharti group is set to offer wi-fi services at homes. Bharti already offers broadband DSL services (an always-on internet connection) nationwide to its fixed line customers.

It will offer the same subscribers the option of subscribing to wi-fi services at home as an add on. All they'll have to do is to replace a DSL modem (required for the always-on service) with a wi-fi-enabled modem by paying an extra Rs 3,000.

Says Jagbir Singh, group chief technology officer at Bharti's fixed line business: "We expect over 80,000 broadband customers by the end of this year. Of them at least 1,000 will subscribe to wi-fi services."

The Bharti group has also tied up with Intel, the chip producer, to jointly promote wi-fi in the country. Intel wants to sell wi-fi-enabled PC cards and push the sales of PCs that are embedded with Intel PC cards.

The Bharti group is talking to hotels and fast food chains on setting up hot spots at their premises. The group's talks on introducing wi-fi at the exhibition halls at New Delhi's Pragati Maidan (run by the Trade Fair Authority of India) are at an advanced stage.

Not to be outdone, Tata Teleservices, the fixed line and limited mobile services company, has tied up with Barista (the Tata group has a stake in the coffee chain).

Wi-fi services are already on offer in 10 Barista coffee outlets in Mumbai and will be introduced in New Delhi before Tata Teleservices rolls out wi-fi services nationwide.

The Tatas have identified three key market segments. One, the group wants to create enterprise hotspots for company sales and marketing forces located in franchisee or distributors' premises.

Two, it will try and persuade companies to replace wired local area networks (WLANs) with wi-fi. Three, it wants to create more hot spots at airports, shopping centres, malls and hotels.

Sify has rolled out wi-fi services at Chennai international airport and will launch these in Delhi. Sify already runs cyber cafes at these airports and so can offer wi-fi services at a very low incremental cost.

Says Srikant Joshi, who heads Sify's wi-fi initiative: "At the moment we get between 2 and 10 users a day as it is still in its infancy, though the average usage varies from 30 minutes to one hour. We are now at a learning stage."

Last but not least, international long distance services company Data Access too is looking at the wi-fi business closely. It's working on a pilot project to make a university campus in the UK wi-fi enabled.

Data Access hopes to experiment with the new hybrid wi-fi cum-global system for mobile (GSM) phones that Nokia is launching in January. Those who have the phone can seamlessly move from a wi-fi to a GSM area without loss of data or voice.

Says chairman Siddharth Ray: "We are closely watching the Indian market and the regulations to see were they go."

India's fledgling wi-fi market got a major fillip last year when the government delicensed the indoor use of the wi-fi spectrum (802.11b). Individuals earlier had to take a licence and pay for the spectrum and the usage of wi-fi.

To be sure, wi-fi has been around in Indian offices and hotels. According to Amar Babu, Intel's director for sales, South Asia, India has only about 100 hotspots in hotels and in the offices of leading software companies.

Microsoft's Delhi office has wi-fi, as do the Taj group of hotels and Le Meridien. Some four months ago, Punjab National Bank set up nine wi-fi sites, five in Delhi and four in Mumbai, according to K.S. Bajwa, deputy general manager at PNB's IT division.

Says Bajwa: "We have implemented wireless in the branches for connecting branches rather than offering local networking in the offices." Other companies too intend to instal wi-fi.

Says Manish Choksi, vice president, strategic planning and IT, at Asian Paints (India): We are actively looking to implement a wi-fi solution on the floor that houses the directors' wing and on the floor where we have a large number of meeting rooms to facilitate easy access to all network resources."

Even so, India has among the lowest levels of hot spot deployment in Asia Pacific "� less than 10 per cent of the number found in China and just one per cent of the hot spot deployment in Korea.

That could change now, with the big boys moving into the business. Yet why are they eyeing what plainly is a minuscule market? Ask Bharti group chairman Sunil Mittal that question and he replies that it is a technology that must be closely watched because it could in the future change the name of the game.

Says Mittal: "It complements GSM. So when you are in office, you'll use wi-fi. When you are outside the office, you'll shift to GPRS (general packet radio system). Technologies are being developed so that this shift can be seamless."

Indeed, telecom companies and hardware suppliers salivate over the potential of the business.

"In the long term, any telecom service company that fails to offer wi-fi as part of its product range will miss addressing a large market segment: well-off, high spending corporate executives who generate large revenues."

Adds U R Acharya, business development manager, wireless, at Cisco: "The fastest growing markets in this region for wi-fi will be China, India and the Philippines".

Even owners of hot spots see the business potential. Says Barista chief executive officer Yogesh Samat: "This is in line with our endeavor to provide our patrons with the best facilities, along with the best coffee. This would make Barista a preferred place for meetings and attract a wider spectrum of consumers."

To be sure, India's wi-fi wannabes will find the going tough. For starters, laptop penetration is low.

According to an estimate by the Manufacturers' Association of Information Technology, which represents the interests of hardware companies, laptops comprised just as 0.4 per cent percentage of all PCs sold. Only around 16,000 laptops are sold in India every year.

Secondly, a DSL connection does not come cheap, even though tariffs have been dropping. Installation charges for an always-on connection are around Rs 3,000 and the monthly bill could range from Rs 600 to Rs 1,000, depending on usage.

And if you want to instal a wi-fi enabled modem with a built-in access point, the price could range from Rs 11,000 to Rs 15,000 (the Bharti group is subsidising the modem cost).

Thirdly, setting up a hot spot is relatively expensive. The cost could range between Rs 10,000 and Rs 20,000 for a low-cost DSL connection.

But in potentially high-traffic areas that could call for a leased line, investments could go up to as much over Rs 50,000. And, mind you, no one knows how many people will use wi-fi.

Fourthly, government rules still do not encourage wider deployment of wi-fi services.

Says Joshi: "Government policy does not allow wi-fi deployment outside. So you cannot, for instance, wi-fi-enable an entire campus." What is more, Airport Authority of India tenders are floated to rent out space for cyber cafes, not for wi-fi hot spots alone.

Last but not least, hot spot owners tend to regard wi-fi it as a means of earning money in the short term rather than as a long-term investment that will bring in more customers.

Bharti's Singh complains: "Most hot spot owners want a revenue share model. That makes the cost to customers a bit too high."

Bharti hopes to charge for wi- fi services around Rs 20 an hour (compare this with the around Rs 15 an hour cyber cafes charge to surf the internet). But the tariff could go up if the hot spot owner also wants a share of the revenue.

Sify, on the other hand, charges Rs 60 for an hour of surfing (double of what it charges cyber cafe users) but offers customers flexibility: you can take surf for 15, 30 or 60 minutes. It also doesn't charge for a wi-fi PC card if customers want one.

So does Sify make money? No, a stand alone wi-fi service is not viable today after paying the prohibitive monthly rentals for cyber café space.

Says Joshi: "We cannot survive only on wi-fi. For us it is only an incremental cost as we run a cyber cafe and IP telephony and already have a fibre optic line connected in the airport to offer these services. So the extra cost is only the cost of some access points."

Bharti regards wi-fi as something that will help help it hawk more DSL connections and increase customer hourly usage. In furtherance of these objectives it is willing to subsidise wi-fi modem boxes.

Still, wi-fi's advocates can take heart from the findings of an Intel Corporation-sponsored survey "Road Warriors and Wi-Fi," conducted under the direction of The Brain Group, an international research and strategy agency "� 71 per cent of road warriors believe that wi-fi will give business travellers a competitive advantage.

While only one in 10 road warriors had tried wi-fi, nearly 90 per cent see wireless computing in their future. A third of Asian road warriors said they plan to try wi-fi within the next three to six months. Can India's road warriors then be far behind?

Additional reporting by Sanjay K. Pillai in Chennai and our Delhi and Mumbai bureaus

Who's doing what

The Bharti group is set to offer wi-fi services at homes. The group offers broadband DSL to fixed line customers. It will offer the same subscribers the option of subscribing to wi-fi services at home as an add on. It has tied up with Intel, the chip producer, to jointly promote wi-fi in India

Tata Teleservices has tied up with Barista. Wi-fi services are already on offer in 10 Barista coffee outlets in Mumbai and will be introduced in New Delhi before Tata Teleservices rolls out wi-fi nationwide.

Satyam Infoway has rolled out wi-fi services at Chennai international airport and is now launching them in Delhi

Data Access is looking at the wi-fi business closely. It hopes to experiment with the new hybrid wi-fi cum-global system for mobile (GSM) phones that Nokia is launching in January.

FAQs

What is wi-fi?

Wi-fi is a short form for wireless fidelity, the popular term for high speed wirefree access to the internet. Wi-fi networks allow laptops, notebooks and handheld devices to get automatically connected to the internet.

What is a hot spot?

A hot spot is a wireless broadband internet access area at public places such as shopping centres, coffee shops, eating joints, convention centres and hotels.

How does a hot spot work?

Each hot spot has access points installed there. These access points emit radio frequencies that are picked up by the wireless LAN card installed in your laptop or personal digital assistant.

Whenever you are in the area covered by this signal, ranging from 20 metres to 50 metres from the access point, you can access broadband wireless internet at high speeds.

What devices will you require to use wi-fi?

You will need a laptop or a PDA or a tablet PC equipped with a wi-fi- enabled wireless LAN card, available for Rs 2,500 to Rs 3,500. Some laptops now have in-built wi-fi cards.

At home, you need a DSL connection (an always-on internet connection) and a wi-fi- enabled modem with a access point built in. This is priced between Rs 12,000 and Rs 15,000, though the Bharti group is now offering it for Rs 6,000.

What kind of download speeds will you get?

At least I mbps to 2 mbps per second, though theoretically you can get speeds as high as 5-6 mbps per second. Contrast this with dial-up modem speeds of never more than 30- 40 kbps a second, or GPRS speeds of 40 kbps and CDMA 1x speeds of 60 kbps.

What is the difference between Bluetooth and wi-fi?

Bluetooth offers speeds of under 1mbps. The technology offers a coverage of up to 10 metres, versus wi-fi's 50 metres.

Using bluetooth, you'll need access points every 10 metres, versus wi-fi's every 80 metres.