Initiative aims to bring support to the Indian Government’s ‘100 Smart Cities’ program
The Wireless Broadband Alliance, in association with FICCI, hosted the WBA Vision Forum, its first ever initiative in India, on 13th of August, 2015 at FICCI Auditorium, New Delhi, India. The event brought together several leading telecom ecosystem players and government officials from around the world to discuss the key role of Wi-Fi in driving the Indian Government’s ‘100 Smart Cities’ program.
Welcoming everyone to the event and introducing WBA to India in his keynote speech, Shrikant Shenwai, CEO, WBA, said, “WBA is an industry organization which is somewhat unique in the sense that we are not a group of company operators who are based on a particular technology. You’ll see carriers, who are pure Wi-Fi operators, major mobile operator companies, many technology vendors, and of course cable companies and broadband companies”.
“WBA members see Wi-Fi as a major unlicensed technology which has a significant role to play in delivering wireless broadband services for consumers worldwide.”
WBA CEO Shrikant Shenwai at the WBA Vision Forum.
Explaining the concept of next-gen Wi-Fi and WBA’s vision, Shenwai said: “Essentially, the vision is to make Wi-Fi connectivity on par with cellular services. You switch on a device, it looks for a network, connects to the best available network and works automatically without a lot of manual intervention. That’s the vision that WBA has been championing for next-generation Wi-Fi and that manifests in a lot of other things that we do in terms of technical developments.”
“As an industry body, we recognize that there’s lot of other industry bodies that are doing work that are relevant to us. Wi-Fi has to work with other technologies. Wi-Fi, cellular technologies, licensed technologies, even unlicensed technologies have their roles to play and from WBA’s stand point of view, we need to work actively with other industry organizations and this is again reflected in some other projects and activities that we do.”
Here are some more highlights from Shenwai’s address.
Thoughts on the evolution of Wi-Fi and what WBA is working towards as they progress:
“Wi-Fi has a role to play beyond public Wi-Fi. As we begin to discuss Smart Cities, they require technologies like Wi-Fi to deliver not just public access but also need to enable several smart applications and services.”
“Internet of Things, Converged Services, Big Data Analytics, the development of 5G, these are all going to be influenced by, and will interact with, Wi-Fi.”
Views on India and the opportunities and challenges it presents as a green-field:
“Coming to India, it’s very interesting that we see that there’s a huge tele-density here which is obviously growing. There are 1 billion connections and 97% are set on wireless as per the reports, but the hotspot density remains far too low. Data traffic will grow exponentially and that’s based on the fact that today, only 130 million users in India are smartphone users. That number is supposed to grow significantly to about 700 million in future. Today, the average usage is about 1 gigabit per user or per subscriber, and we think that will multiply by a considerable margin.”
Where does India stand in comparison to other countries?
“Looking at the density of hotspots in India, the current average is 1 hotspot per 40,000 people. In comparison, France has 1 per 5, and China has 1 per 250. A lot of work needs to be done and there are a lot of opportunities and challenges, which is why we can see that the industry needs to get together. We are happy to be a part of that process and happy to help the industry move forward based on all the global expertise and work we have been doing.”
“With India in particular, there are a couple of important things to remember. Whoever is looking at Wi-Fi, you may want to keep in mind that there is a next generation of Wi-Fi that is now being developed and has been deployed and implemented worldwide. Anyone looking at deployment in India must look at next-generation Wi-Fi as a starting point. We would welcome anyone who has interest in learning from WBA and engaging with WBA in deploying next generation Wi-Fi through our Next Generation Hotspot program.”
Thoughts on the significance of the co-existence between licensed and unlicensed technologies in driving the 100 Smart Cities program.
“The Smart City program, and the applications that it will offer, is very challenging. These challenges cannot and will not be met by just licensed technologies alone. You need Wi-Fi and licensed technologies to be part of the delivery and the solution. The solution cannot be completely based on one particular set of technologies; it has to be a mix of technologies, and Wi-Fi will have a significant role to play. An interesting data-point is that worldwide Wi-Fi is already carrying more than 50% of the data traffic. Today, 50% of smartphone traffic is being carried on Wi-Fi networks.”
“A number of cities have been engaged with the WBA, including San Jose, San Francisco, New York, and Barcelona. We’ve been having discussions on how to support citywide Wi-Fi deployments, and in order to continue that dialogue on a regular basis, we’ve created the Connected City Advisory Board – an exclusive group of city leaders, CIOs, and city officials. I am pleased to share that we’ve had a discussion with the Delhi Government and Ashish Khetan (Vice Chairman, Delhi Dialogue Commission) and his team has kindly agreed to be a part of this Advisory Board.”
You can view and download Shenwai’s presentation from the WBA Vision Forum, “Powering the Vision for Smart Cities,” by logging into our Resource Center.
Original draft of this blog was researched and written by Arihant Kothari of Bloggers Mind.
