Gurgaon: The Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority’s (GMDA) plan to set up Wi-Fi hotspots at 1,000 locations in the city has met a dead end. Almost a year and a half after it had invited agencies for setting up the hotspots, there has been no development in the project, and not a single hotspot has been set up yet.
According to sources in the GMDA, the project has been put on hold for now as the metropolitan authority’s smart city division is busy working on the CCTV project instead. “As of now we haven’t set up even a single Wi-Fi hotspot in the city. The project is currently on the back burner,” a senior GMDA official told TOI.
In a reply to an RTI query filed by city-based activist Aseem Takkyar last year, GMDA had said it had no plans to provide the facility but provided no specific reason for shelving the project.
In May last year, TOI had reported that the metropolitan body had earlier planned to install hotspots, including bus queue shelters, under its Smart City project. These would include public spaces, court complexes, parks and bus shelters.
The authority had asked internet service providers, telecom operators or infrastructure providers to submit bids for the project latest by June. The total capital expenditure and operational expenditure for the project would be borne by the service provider.
“GMDA will provide the licence to install Wi-Fi hotspots and metered electric connections whereas all the other arrangements will have to be done by the service provider,” a GMDA official had said. He had added that the selected agency will first provide the facility at 100 spots and it will be scaled throughout the city only after the success of the pilot project.
The empanelled agency was supposed to operate and maintain the Wi-Fi hotspots for a period of five years. The official had said the service provider will be required to provide free public Wi-Fi access to Gurgaon citizens on a daily basis with minimum 1GB data at the speed of at least 10 Mbps. The primary objective behind the project was to enable smart city services in the city, as studies done across the world, including in countries like China, had revealed that many cities have public Wi-Fi networks that enable citizens to use the different kinds of smart city applications.