Two days after the free Namma Wi-Fi was made accessible to Bangaloreans at six spots in the city, most citizens seemed unaware of the service and continued to use internet data packs on their cell phones.
The service had been used by 507 users within 24 hours of its launch on Friday in the commercial hotspots of M.G. Road, Brigade Road, CMH Road in Indiranagar, and three TTMCs of Shanthinagar, Yeshwanthpur and Koramangala.
Most shoppers on Brigade road and MG road were under the impression that select eateries had free access to Wi-Fi, but didn’t think such a service was available on the entire stretch of the roads.
ADVERTISEMENT
Among the very few people aware of the availability of the service, there were mixed responses in terms of Wi -Fi usage. Nivedita and Monica, students of Garden City College, who frequently visit Brigade road, said: “We tried using the service , but each time it got disconnected a few seconds later. It does not seem to work properly on our phones.”
Some citizens said they were able to browse at high speed in certain spots while others could download at more than 1.06 mbps.
Some others also said they had not yet tried using the service as they were content with their internet packs. While network connectivity was largely accessible on CMH road and in the Shanti Nagar and Koramangala bus stands, there were a few exceptions. Manoj K.S, a businessman, was struggling to connect to the Wi-Fi network at Shanti Nagar bus stand. “The access code that I received though SMS is not working,” he complained.
ADVERTISEMENT
The Wi-Fi service at the Yeshwanthpur TTMC remained unavailable for a couple of hours on Sunday. Ramesh Sathya, director of D-Vois Broadband Pvt. Ltd, cited data loss as the reason for taking down the network. “The distance between the hot-spot and Yeshwanthpur bus stand is over 15 kilometre. In such a situation, the internet speed will decrease due to data loss,” he said, adding that services were restored by evening.