Wi-Fi is going to be a key building block in India’s digital empowerment’

In wake of Delhi Government’s announcement regarding providing free Wi-Fi in the state, Dataquest spoke to Sanjeev Bobby Sarin, Founder & CEO, Ozone Networks to know more about how the plan will help in fuelling India’s digital journey and how it will impact the service providers. Excerpts

According to you, how important is Wi-Fi in India’s digital empowerment?

Internet penetration in India is still very low if we compare itwith the rest of the world. I strongly feel that if India really wants to bea digitally empowered country, Wi-Fi is going to be a key building blockas there is a severe lack of infrastructure for home broadband andinconsistent wireless coverage. Availability of Wi-Fi in public placesis slowly catching up in India and operators have been actively takingthis forward, as there is a realization that home access will be out ofreach for the bulk of the population. Wi-Fi is unique as it is aninexpensive data-centric broadband access technology available in themajority of devices shippedtoday. This makes Wi-Fi a high potential
technology for low cost data access and rural communication services forthe masses

In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges in the government’s Digital India vision?

I believe Digital India is one of those visionary ideas that havethe potential and depth to transform India. The plan is to establish adigital platform to digitally connect and deliver government programsand services to individuals across India, alongside content andservices users want to access.
There are undoubtedly a few challenges that need to be addressed if weare to achieve the Digital India goal; infrastructure, neutrality andsecurity being the prime concern. India will need massive data storage,all the data needs to be backed up at an alternate site. This will requirehuge investments to set up data centers in various parts of the country.

We need to encourage all service providers and partners to educate andembrace users to use the networks, and ensure they have a sustainablebusiness model. So neutrality is key to the roll out of infrastructure.All providers should get access equally to grow Digital India. If we arenot inclusive, like other projects in other countries, the project willfail, and it’s too critical to fail. India is a nation where we do nottake security seriously, which has left our IT infrastructure defenseless. Securing the data is going to be a huge challenge, but we have talented engineerswho I am sure can create an Indian solution to ensure our security.

How will the announcement of free Wi-Fi impact service providers? How will they be able to cover their infrastructure investments?

I would not call the service ‘free Wi-Fi” but instead call it a complimentary Wi-Fi for the customer. At the end of the day nothing isfree, as someone has to pay for the network, so we will have advertisersand partners sponsor usage by the customer, so that we can fundoperations and grow our network.

I certainly believe that connectivity or Internet has become moreof an infrastructure requirement like the road, water and electricity,so the need for Internet is going to be huge. We only have 6% population, which is connectedtodayin a population of 1.27bn. This leaves out a huge population of around 800-900 mn unconnected.

Again, we also need to understand it that it’s not totally free. Serviceproviders offer complimentary packs to consumers. For instance, for 30minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes and in certain cases even annualpackages, depending on the customer preference and usage.

Also, the customer is notified once the complimentary session is overand has the choice to pay and continue. I understand the limitations onthe amount of data or time for which this free Internet can be provided.I would also like to add that every industry needs to work with acombination and have a free plus paid model, but at the end allbusinesses need revenue to survive and grow. At the end of the day, as aservice provider one needs to monetize things to cover infrastructureinvestments and continue to deliver customers a seamless Internetexperience, investing in more and more locations to give true accesswhere the user needs it.

Please share your views on how free Wi-Fi will impact mobile data companies.

Wi-Fi has a definite role to play to help improve traffic concernsin certain locations or at certain times of the day and it is thepreferred and the primary form of data connection used by many customers. So I would say that globally Wi-Fi is acomplimentary part of the data network ecosystem for operators, andIndia will be no different, as the surge of traffic on mobile networkswill need Wi-Fi networks to shoulder the load.