PATNA: If all goes well, a free Wi-Fi zone on the lines of Patna's may be created in all state capitals of the country. Confirming the buzz, Beltron MD Atul Sinha toled that in the last week of May, some senior officials of the communication ministry's telecom department contacted Beltron and asked for details related to the free Wi-Fi zone of Patna.
On May 26, the officials from the Union ministry of communications and information technology contacted Beltron and asked for information related to expenditure, number of access points and black hole networks of the free Wi-Fi zone of Patna. "The ministry, probably, plans to create such Wi-Fi zone in every state capital of the country," Sinha said adding in Delhi, the plan is in its concept stage and officials are working out the expenditure on creating the Wi-Fi network. This may be an initiative of Union communication minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, who belongs to Bihar.
The 18-km-long Wi-Fi zone, which is the world's longest free Wi-Fi zone, covers a stretch from NIT Patna to Saguna Mor on the western end of Bailey Road. Inaugurated by then Bihar CM Nitish Kumar at a function in February last, one can use the network at a maximum speed of 512 Mbps and currently it has a bandwidth of 20 Mbps.
"We have a capacity of 1,000 simultaneous users. However, the possibility of 1,000 users at a time is too low as even when 10,000 people are logged in at a time, there can't be 1,000 simultaneous users," said Sinha, explaining simultaneous users are those who type the URL and click enter at a given time, so it is practically impossible to have 1,000 simultaneous users," he said.
To use the Wi-Fi network, one has to be in the range of the network, which is 300 metres from the arterial roads under the coverage area, with any Wi-Fi enabled phone or a tablet. A tab of 'Free Wi-Fi Zone of Patna' will appear on the screen. If one clicks on it, another page will appear asking for a user name and mobile number. After feeding the info, the mobile number will receive a message giving the password for the user name. With the same user name and password, one can browse the Internet.
The biggest advantage of such a Wi-Fi network would be free Internet access to those who seldom used Internet and to increase the number of Internet users in the city. "The number of telephone users is too high in our country, but against that number, those using Internet is too less. Even the Union telecom department officials asked about the advantage of such a network and we said, this free service would enable us to increase the number of Internet users in our country," said Sinha.
Security aspect, too, has been taken care of, as state telecom department is keeping a tab on all the sites people are browsing. No one can browse pornography through this Wi-Fi network as these sites are blocked by the department.
source :TOI
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