Modi government has decided to give a major push to Wi-Fi deployment across the length and breadth of the country and will facilitate the setting up of as many as 7.5 lakh public-internet hot-spots by the end of next year.
The set-up mainly focused at providing high-speed internet in semi-urban and rural areas and will be carried out by private operators such as Reliance Jio, Airtel, Vodafone, Idea Cellular and state-owned BSNL, apart from internet service providers (ISPs), Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan said.
“The idea is to enable e-governance and digital-development initiatives through provision of high-speed, and affordable internet infrastructure,” Sundararajan asserted.  The telecom ministry has also called a high-level meeting which will be attended by the key representatives of various state governments with an aim to find out methods for digital delivery of services in  education, health  and rural development sectors.
As per latest reports, the government has successfully reached around 75,000 Gram Panchayats by now and aims to reach 1 lakh Gram Panchayats by the end of this year.
Meanwhile, to carry out the Project, a high-level meeting was called by telecom ministry, involving key representatives from various state governments to discuss about the methodologies and ways to provide digital service to various sectors like education, health, rural development etc.
As per sources, the government aims to have around three Wi-Fi hotspots per Gram Panchayat providing 1GB of data usage per day.
