After coffee houses and five-star hotels, Delhites would be able to avail free Wi-Fi services in temples. Arjita Mishra talks to the organisers and finds out that the service cannot be misused as the mobile numbers of the users will be registered
Turns out that people are taking the idea of a Digital India quite seriously. Hundreds of engineers might not all be employed by the time they graduate but big corporates are leaving no stone unturned in making free Wi-Fi available to people. First, it was coffee houses and franchise restaurants, five-star hotels had already incorporated that. Then there talks that the Delhi metro, too, might start a free Wi-Fi and talks are going on to make it fully functional by the end of the year.
But did you know that you can even access your mail and update a status on social networking site in the sanctity of a templeIJ Yes, there are a few temples in and around the city where you can avail free Wi-Fi. Does that sound reason enough to pray more oftenIJ
Two months back, when nobody would have thought of accessing free Wi-Fi in temples, Pujashoppe.com was planning to introduce free Wi-Fi in temples. And with a few helping hands a good team of people, the Hanumanmandir, Jhandewalan, Bhagwat Dham, Akshardham Temple, Delhi, Bawa lalJi and Shri Digambar Jain lal Mandir are now providing free Wi-Fi services.
When we asked Tapas Mallick, CEO of the company who came up with the idea, he explained that it was conceived after Google offered free Wi-Fi in 400 stations during PM’s visit to Google campus. “It was then that we decided to become the first startup to offer free Wi-Fi in temples,” he said.
The company is currently enjoying its monopoly in the market as there are no other company providing this facility.
Now the question arises on how to access this service. “People can just enter the temple premises and connect to the Wi-Fi access provided by the company,” said Amushree Jha, co-founder and director.
Prakash Kumar Singh, VP of operation and franchise development, explained the whole process. “As soon as the user enters the Wi-Fi zone they will see our network symbol on their device. In order to access the network, a browser will open up asking page authentication from the user. To get the authentication, the user needs to enter their name, mobile number and e-mail address and press the submit button on the browser. Within a few seconds, the user will get the system generated OTP (one-time password) through SMS. The user needs to enter system generated OTP as the password to get the free Wi-Fi access,” he elaborated. The service is absolutely free of cost for 30 minutes and it is available 24*7.
As we all know that there are chances of misusing this service, but the organisers are pretty sure that it will not happen. “No they cannot misuse it as their mobile number is needed to register or log in,” said Kiran Dutta, assistant manager of the company.
Not only in Delhi but the company is providing its this service to other places as well. Soon, 12 temples of Ranchi, Jharkhand, one in Gujarat and one in Uttar Pradesh will be able to utilise this facility. The company is also willing to expand this project in near future.