In line with the Prime Minister’s Digital India venture, Facebook will pay for free internet through 100 Wi-Fi hotspots that BSNL will set up in rural areas across the nation. Apart from this, the latter will even hoist over 2000 commercially viable connectivity zones in partnership with Trimax and Quad Zen.
Facebook will help BSNL set up 100 rural Wi-Fi hotspots across western and southern India by backing the initiative with Rs 5 crores per year for the bandwidth. The Wi-Fi zones will be erected by Quad Zen. This brings us to the question of why we are looking outside the country to sponsor such a project. Rs 5 crores a year is chump change for the hundreds of Indian companies which earn much more than that annually.
Facebook has been taking a lot of flak for its Internet.org platform (now called Free Basics) and paying for BSNL bandwidth with undoubtedly rake in some goodwill. It will not be earning revenue from the program. State-run BSNL has already built 25 rural Wi-Fi hotspots under the three-year deal it has signed with the social networking giant. The agreement may be extended by another two years, according to the mobile operator’s chairman and MD Anupam Shrivastava.
Even though Facebook won’t be raking in any money from the initiative with BSNL, the latter along with Quad Zen, do have a revenue sharing deal between them. Commercial Wi-Fi zones numbering up to 2500 will be put up across India by the network operator. Several politicians have also shown interest in sponsoring free internet hotspots in rural areas they have adopted under the Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana (SAGY) scheme, reports PTI.
Ravi Shankar Prasad, Nitin Gadkari, Sumitra Mahajan and Najma Heptulla will be paying for bandwidth for free Wi-Fi in the villages they have taken under their wings. Additionally, more than 50 members of parliament (MP) have responded well to sponsorship initiative which falls under the Member of Parliament Local Area Development (MPLAD) venture. For the commercial model, BSNL has engaged Trimax to create 500 hotspots in North India.
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Quad Zen will set up 2000 internet zones in the western and southern parts of the nation. The aforesaid MPs and Facebook are sponsoring BSNL Wi-Fi hotspots in places where it is not commercially feasible to do so, though these regions are due to receive connectivity through the government’s fiber optics network in the future.