Passengers at the Delhi airport will soon be able to enjoy access to high-speed Internet without the hassle of logging into the airport’s Wi-Fi network.
Currently, people have access to free Wi-Fi services at the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) but have to first log in to the network and generate a user id and a password — a process many find to be cumbersome.
Thanks to a new service called ‘Mobile Data Offloading’ (MDO), which will soon be launched by the airport operator Delhi International Airport Ltd. (DIAL), passengers will be able to access Wi-Fi through their existing data services on their phone, sources at the airport said.
“With the launch of this service, IGIA is set to become India’s largest Wi-Fi zone,” an official said, adding: “The service enables passengers to automatically offload data traffic from their phones to a high-capacity Wi-Fi network, as they arrive at the airport.”
‘Seamless access’
“Passengers can get seamless access to high-speed Internet on the same data plan that they have subscribed to on their phones. The service runs on an underlying Wi-Fi network of the airport,” the official said.
The primary benefit of the facility is that customers will get high-speed Internet at 2G/3G data price and enjoy 2G/3G MDO seamless connectivity with no additional charges, the official said.
Passengers will be able to choose between the existing Wi-Fi service and upcoming MDO service.
“The MDO facility will be in addition to DIAL’s existing 45-minute free Wi-Fi service.
Passengers will also be provided 1GB free data under MDO.
DIAL has tied up with Vodafone India to provide this service, while talks are in advance stages with Bharti Airtel, which is likely to join within a few months, he said.
To use this service, the passengers have to subscribe to ‘service packs’ of either of the service providers, which will enable seamless and automatic switching between the mobile network and airport’s Wi-Fi network.
