Since at first it did not succeed, TRAI’s trying again. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) came out on Monday with a consultation paper seeking a response to the evergreen question it asked in 2016: how can public WiFi hotspots take off? As the three private telcos steadily implement tariff hikes, this may be a timely shot at a familiar problem for the government.
Public hotspots have been beset by a bevy of issues. For one, WiFi access per-gigabyte is far cheaper than even Indian mobile data prices; but mobile data is still pretty inexpensive, constraining demand at scale. A second problem is telcos and Internet service providers’ aggressive campaign against public WiFi, by charging them enterprise-leased line rates that cost lakhs a year, pricing out small shops where access points can make a difference.