C ome Sunday, and Delhi is going to have the country’s largest single operator Wi-Fi hotspot. After repeated delays and trial runs, the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) is finally going to launch its free Wi-Fi service in Connaught Place. The facility, which is a significant feature of the smart city project conceived by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will be launched by lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung at Central Park .
Covering an area of 4.5 square kilometres, the Wi-Fi hotspot service will be available in the inner and outer circles of CP including Central Park. The first 20 minutes of the service would be free of cost and after that one has the option of buying a plan online or through purchase of scratch cards, starting from Rs20 for 40 minutes, Rs30 for 60 minutes and Rs50 for 100 minutes.
By area, the Wi-Fi service in CP will be the largest ever in India. At a time, the service can be availed by 5,000 people with the speed of 512 kbps (kilobytes per second). To avail the service, customers would get ‘one-time password’ using which they can avail free internet for the first 20 minutes,” said a senior NDMC official. lG Jung will launch the facility at Central Park on Sunday around 3 pm.
Although delayed by over five months, the facility comes second after it was first launched in Khan Market. While the service provider for Khan Market is Vodafone, the one in CP is being laid down by Tata Docomo. “The facility took some time in being fully operational as we faced several logistical problems. We were doing trial runs then in order to ensure seamless connectivity in the commercial hub that CP is,” said OP Mishra, director (projects), NDMC. It was first to be launched in July this year.
The service is a part of the Urban Development Ministry’s Smart City project for which the lutyens’ Zone has been identified apart from that of the Delhi Development Authority’s (DDA) under its flagship land pooling policy. Connaught Place, now known as Rajiv Chowk, is a prominent place in the national Capital where thousands of people visit every day for business and shopping purposes.