AAP government to make DTC buses Wi-Fi enabled in next two to three months

By NewsGram Staff Writer

Delhi Transport Corporation with the support from the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is working on a plan to make buses Wi-Fi enabled in the next two to three months. The plan is a part of an overall policy of the state government to encourage the usage of public transport.

The pilot project is named as Proof of Concept (POC), and will currently be deployed at a test phase to check its efficiency.

The much endeavored plan by the ruling AAP not only intends to upgrade the DTC buses, but also a few selected areas of the city, as Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal plans to make 1,000 localities in the city Wi-Fi enabled by the first quarter of 2016.

Explaining about the project, Delhi Dialogue Commission Vice-Chairman, Ashish Khetan, said, "The government has given approval for the POC. We will learn from the experiment and then see how we can take this forward. This is the first time that any city is trying to roll out public Wi-Fi at such a massive scale. We want to have well-defined public areas like government offices, schools, hospitals, community centers and parks where Wi-Fi should be freely available at all times. To make this happen, a revenue model has to be prepared."

He also specified that the government might sign an agreement with the interested firms within two weeks.

"We studied the Stockholm model where they invested heavily over 20 years in laying out a fiber optic cable network. This network belongs to the government and the network led to an IT and telecom revolution in the city," Khetan said.

Khetan's prime concern is fiber optic cable network's scarcity in the national capital. "With data usage expected to go up, this network will have to be strengthened and this is one area that the government is now planning to focus on," he said.