BSNL targets 2500 Wi-Fi hotspots in the current fiscal

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) is in process of setting up Wi-Fi Hotspots on PAN India basis (except Delhi  and Mumbai). It has reportedly a target to set up 40,000 wi-fi hotspots in next three years and will be investing Rs. 6,000 crore for that.

Anupam Shrivastava, CMD BSNL, said that BSNL along with the private players, have already installed more than 250 Wi-Fi hotspots at various locations and has plans to provide around 2500 Wi-Fi hotspots by the end of this financial year.

BSNL, a while back, sought expression of interest from private parties to install and manage the Wi-Fi hotspot services at public places for five years on a revenue share basis with CAPEX and OPEX on part of the bidders. The facilities can be created by BSNL with the optical fibre backbone using GPON technology which can provide backhaul broadband bandwidth upto 100 Mbps through BSNL’s state of art MPLS network.

BSNL is already in the process of setting up Wi-Fi at all important tourist  and commercial locations and covered locations such as Varanasi Ghats, Taj Mahal-Agra, Hussain Sagar Lake, Charminar, Sarnath, Sun Temple-Konark, Brihadeshwar Temple, Hampi, Khajuraho, Jagnnath Temple, Nashik, etc.

BSNL is providing free Wi-Fi services threes times in a month, for 30 minutes per 24 hours- which visitors can utilize in multiple sessions. After free usage limit of 30 minutes is exhausted, a customer can continue using the service on paid basis for which subscription plans are available in the denomination of Rs. 20, Rs. 30, Rs. 50 and Rs. 70 for validity of 30 min, 60 min, 120 min and one day respectively.