1,000 WiFi zones on cards in city, GMDA invites bids

Gurgaon: The Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA), under its Smart City plan, is looking for agencies to install WiFi hotspots at 1,000 locations across the city.
These would include public spaces, court complex, parks and bus shelters.
The authority asked Internet Service Providers (ISPs)/telecom operators and infrastructure providers to submit their bids for the project latest by June. The total capital expenditure and operational expenditure for the project will be borne by the service provider. “GMDA will provide licence to install WiFi hotspots and metered electricity connections, but all other arrangements will have to be done by the service provider,” said a GMDA official.
He added the selected agency will first run a pilot at 100 spots, and only after its success, will it be scaled up throughout the city. The empanelled agency will be required to operate and maintain the WiFi hotspots for a period of five years. The official said the service provider will be required to provide free public WiFi access to Gurgaon citizens on a daily basis, with minimum 1GB data at the speed of 10 Mbps or more.
Officials in the Smart City division of GMDA said their study of various smart cities in countries like China has revealed that all such cities have WiFi networks that enable citizens to use different kinds of smart city applications.
“We’re in the process of developing a platform which will provide public data on crime, infrastructure, health and other sectors. However, in order to access this information, the public needs good internet connectivity, which is where the WiFi hotspots would come in,” said the official. He added that while most people today have mobile data, it is often too slow and intermittent to be relied upon while using or accessing necessary information.
GMDA is currently undertaking a project to set up an optical fibre network across the city, which will be connected to CCTV cameras.