Mumbai Wifi City (BMC plans WiFi cover for Mumbai)

MUMBAI: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) plans to provide free WiFi network across the city. The service will enable anyone with a PC or a laptop to access Internet anywhere in the city, including in cars and trains, without the need for cable connections.

Mayor Sunil Prabhu said the project proposal is still at a nascent stage and the civic body was working on the security aspects. "We have appointed consultants who are studying how all security concerns can be addressed before kickstarting the project," said Prabhu.

This was one of the promises made by the Shiv Sena before the civic elections last year.


To roll out the WiFi network, towers will be erected throughout the city. While some will be in the city, others will be in the suburbs and the fringes.

Pre-requisites for the project such as roadmap detailing, licensing, positioning of hotspots, hardware and software requirements and survey of the city for setting up the towers are still being worked out.

Civic officials say the project doesn't look very simple and has a lot of intricate details to be taken care of. The project was first envisaged in 2008. The WiFi connectivity plan is aimed at improving services and speeding up the e-governance initiative.

Mumbai is taking the cue from the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC), which had first mooted such a project. PCMC's project is at an advanced stage, said sources.

Cities with WiFi cover :

Seoul

Mountain View, San Jose, and Santa Clara in Silicon Valley

Paris

The City in London

Stockholm

Tallinn, Estonia

Taipei, Taiwan

*Tel Aviv and Sao Paulo plan to go full WiFi soon