Despite being known as the tech capital of the country, Bengaluru is yet to provide free access to WiFi in public spaces. To set this right, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) will provide free WiFi across the city by January 2019.
Speaking at the BBMP monthly council meeting, BBMP commissioner N Manjunath Prasad said, “We have held meetings with the Information Technology (IT) department of the state government and the service will be made available from January or a month later.”
He also said officials from both the departments have identified close to 3,500 spots in the city to provide WiFi connections. Of these, the service will be made available to 800 spots by January and the remaining 2,700 spots will start functioning by April 2019.
Once the WiFi spots are developed, the service will be free for the first half an hour of use. “For those who would like to continue for a further duration, a nominal fee will be charged,” said Prasad.
For this project, which was announced during the BBMP budget, four companies have expressed interest to provide the service, said Prasad. During the BBMP budget for the year 2018-19, WiFi spots across the city were announced. However, even during one of the previous state budgets, the state government had announced this project for Bengaluru, which has not taken off so far. The civic body aims to set up 6,000 WiFi spots in the city.
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