Wi-Fi vs Why-Fi?

Are you aware that today some Indian homes are getting Wi-Fi enabled allowing residents check e-mail and browse the Internet from anywhere in the house—bedroom, verandah, balcony, drawing room? Are you aware that our international airports like Mumbai and Delhi have Wi-Fi hotspots for travelers? Are you aware that you can set up Wi-Fi in your office in India for less than Rs 5,000, and also get rid of all the wiring hassles? Your answer to most of these would most probably be a No.

At the recent TopView panel discussion that we organized on what India needs to do to catch-up with the Wi-Fi leaders, some very interesting thoughts came up. Thoughts that all the stakeholders in the communications domain need to ponder upon. The interesting thing was that when the various stakeholders in the Wi-Fi game—service providers, equipment vendors, the Government, and users—were approached with this idea, all of them got excited and said they were playing an active role in Wi-Fi. However, the TopView discussions showed that though individually they were all playing a role, a joint initiative and plan was missing.

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Fortunately, some areas that need immediate attention came up very clearly in the discussion. Whether they were fixed-line operators offering Wi-Fi on top of broadband or ISPs, the story is the same—not much demand and lukewarm response, problems with the regulators and policy makers, not getting enough support from equipment vendors in terms of better prices, and not enough market awareness. One operator says Wi-Fi at home will drive demand, another one says let’s start with offices, and equipment vendors say the road to success is via more hotspots. They all seem to be heading in different directions. While it’s natural that every player will have its own way of assessing opportunities, it’s important that they also get together and work on some common goals.

There needs to be more and better coordination among equipment vendors, service providers, enterprise users, and the policy makers namely—WPC and the Ministry of Communications. Getting Wi-Fi is seen as a very cumbersome process, involving multiple licenses and months of file pushing. And this is a big de-motivator. There is lots of confusion with respect to Wi-Fi laws. The industry will need to get more organized to take this up with the regulators.

While everybody claims that they have a big stake in Wi-Fi, nobody wants to sit in the driver’s seat. Hotels, airports, or railway stations—organizations which could drive hotspots—do not still see Wi-Fi as something that will get them a competitive edge over others. They see it as a high-value service to be offered at very high rates. They wait for service providers and equipment vendors to approach them. Service providers say hotels and airports should take the initiative.

What has happened in the process is that wherever Wi-Fi initiatives have been taken up, everybody, but more so the service providers has had a big fear-of-failure syndrome. That is why these initiatives are not publicized. Travelers at the airports have nothing to tell them that Wi-Fi is available. And there are hardly any newspaper ads or direct mailers informing high net-worth homes about the Wi-Fi services being offered. While the stakeholders claim that Wi-Fi will take off, the reality is that they are still very unsure. And unless, they work on this together, and work on it fast, the fear of failure will remain.

Ibrahim Ahmed