Welcome to wireless city

Welcome to wireless city
The Times of India

Bangalore: The Silicon Valley of India could soon be on par with cities like San Jose, Philadelphia, Westminster and Taipei!

The Karnataka government, in association with the industry, is planning to make Bangalore a ‘Wi-Fi Zone’. That will provide easy and seamless internet access to individuals, households and corporates, sans cable wires, modems or dial-up devices.

Speaking to The Times of India, IT secretary M.K. Shankaralinge Gowda said the project would be a joint effort between the state government, companies like Intel, and internet service providers. “We are currently in the process of drafting a viable business model. Only after that will we have clarity on issues like revenue sharing, implementation and cost of the services,’’ he said. The state is also planning to come out with a wireless policy to facilitate WiFi initiatives.

The city already has over 200 hotspots (wireless internet access points). “We will leverage on the existing optic fibre cable network that lies around the city to run this project, thereby making Wi-Fi/WiMAX literally the last mile access,’’ Gowda said.

Intel has already prepared a white paper on “unwiring Bangalore’’ that talks about the current net access situation in the city.

Surendra Arora, director, (Asia Pacific Solutions Group), Intel, said the project would use a combination of WiMAX (a standardbased wireless environment that provides high broadband connections at affordable rates) and Wi-Fi (an infrastructure offering a speed of 128 kbps against 56 kbps of dialup) technologies.