In its maiden budget, the AAP government in June last year had announced that colleges and villages will be the first to get free Wi-Fi facility.
However, it turns out that Delhi Secretariat building is the first in the city to get free Internet facility.
In a circular dated March 4, the Delhi government’s Information Technology Department declared that it has completed the installation of the Wi-Fi equipment in the nine-storey Secretariat building near ITO.
Each department will have to nominate a nodal officer and these officers will display the password at designated locations and enable guest users to use the facility. Guest users can connect with Secretariat Wi-Fi using ID ‘SWAGAT’.
In the last one year, the government has made several announcements on its efforts to provide free Wi-Fi, but to date no Wi-Fi zone has been created by the Delhi government. In August, the government had asked IT companies to submit their plans for Wi-Fi facility, but tenders have not been floated yet. The same month, Delhi Dialogue Commission vice-chairman Ashish Khetan at the ‘Wireless Broadband Vision Forum’ at FICCI Federation House had said that by August 2016, free Internet will be provided in colleges and rural areas. “The minimum speed of the Wi-Fi that we are proposing is 1Mbps for good user experience and each user should get free 1GB download in a month.
In the first phase, which should not take more than one year to complete, free Wi-Fi will be available in both private and government colleges in Delhi,” he had said.
But, nothing has happened on the ground so far. Only Delhi Transport Department has started free Wi-Fi facility in its 12 buses, but it is on trial basis. “It has not been formally launched in all the buses and there are some problems with the connectivity. Since it is on trial basis, these problems will be plugged and free Wi-Fi will then be extended to all buses,” said an official.
