City’s free public Wi-Fi project lying defunct since 2020

The free public Wi-Fi service project in Mumbai, launched in 2017, has been defunct for three years with no plans for revival. The project aimed to provide access to the poor, but officials now feel it is unnecessary as telecom companies offer cheap internet. The government had planned to spend ₹194 crore over five years, but the project was gradually stopped after a change in government. Former Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has expressed interest in reviving the project.

Mumbai: The free public Wi-Fi service project in Mumbai, which was first rolled out in January 2017, has been lying defunct for three years. The functioning of one of the ambitious pet projects of former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis has been stopped since 2020, and no attempt has been made to revive it by successive governments.

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Officials from the state information technology department said that they don’t feel the necessity of this project anymore. “Telecommunication firms are providing internet at a very cheaper price considering the time when it was launched in 2017. The objective of the project was to enable access even to the poor class, especially students, but now time has changed,” said a senior official from the state information technology department.

In 2017, Mumbai became the first Indian city with public Wi-Fi connectivity when the project was rolled out. The most important feature of the project was that it was free for people with up to 1 GB of data or for the first half hour.

In the first phase, 510 hotspots (access points) were activated, and later additional hotspots were added, taking the tally up to 585 in almost a year. The state had also planned to charge a paltry sum for the service by appointing an operator through a bidding process.

The state had planned to spend ₹194 crore in five years on the project, but after a change in the government the project was gradually stopped, and since 2020, it has remained defunct. The infrastructure installed by the government at around 600 hotspots has been eroded in over three years.

In response to a query sought under RTI (Right to Information), the state information technology department stated that the Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) was the bandwidth provider and Larsen & Toubro (L&T) was playing the role of system integrator. For which the state government paid around ₹25 crore till August 2019 ( ₹15.98 crore to L&T and ₹7.77 crore to MTNL).

The IT department said that there are no plans to revive the project. Fadnavis, who is back in the Eknath Shinde-led government as deputy chief minister, said that he will look for reviving the same. “I will look into it for sure,” he said in response to a query.