No Strings Attached

This plush Powaii pocket is Mumbai’s new hub of an inexpensive technology that is silently changing lifestyles and work cultures across the metros. In Delhi’s Ansal Plaza, at Barista cafes and in upcoming homes, a little extra expenditure—as low as Rs 10,000 for a five-bedroom space—marks the difference between history and happening.

On the 22nd floor of a Powaii high-rise, ponytailed Jheal Shah—a tech-astute 16-year-old—depends on her personal laptop to prepare for an international baccalaureate diploma. The laptop is by her side while she snacks in the kitchen or curls up in the drawing-room with a stunning view of a crocodile-infested lake. It works everywhere, from the balcony to the bathroom, without dragging along a tangle of wires and cables.

When Jheal rests, mom Jagruti quickly borrows the laptop for company while cooking.Hiranandani Developers recently rigged the Shahs’ home with unlimited, automatic wireless access to the web. ‘‘The offer will soon be open to all buyers, as part of the package,’’ says Joseph Martin, who heads IT for Hiranandani. ‘‘Our technology roll-out is complete.’’

At the Hiranandani Hospital lounge, Abhilash Nambiar pats himself on the back for bringing along his Compaq. His wife is admitted in the hospital, ‘‘and when I need to get office work done desperately, I don’t want to hunt for a cybercafe,’’ says the security systems businessman.

The gizmo that enables Nambiar’s laptop to download his office mails at the hospital is a thin, tubular white antenna propped on a black box on the reception desk. It will soon be hidden in a flower vase but the signal penetrates glass to reach up to the sunny porch, enabling wireless access on laptops inside the lobby. The service is currently free but the hospital is preparing a billing software to sell prepaid coupons at barely a rupee a minute.

When Bangalore-based housewife Susan Thomas, 31, needs a special recipe, she just goes online on her personal computer in the kitchen, while chatting with her sister in the US at the same time. Meanwhile, husband Varghese, 35, a senior executive with Cisco Systems, reads office mails on his laptop in the sitting room.

‘‘My house was one of the first such homes in Bangalore,’’ explains Thomas. ‘‘We are no longer wired to our desktops.’’

Freedom in their 1,200 sq ft apartment cost less than Rs 10,000.

That business called WiFi
ONCE on the wishlist of techies, this technology is starting to power cities in the US. It’s called wireless fidelity—or simply WiFi.

The network lets you surf the net or respond to mail from your corporate headquarters while waiting for takeoff at Delhi’s international airport. Or log in in the Ansal Plaza amphitheatre when genius strikes in the middle of a shopping spree.

‘‘Time is in short supply and WiFi saves time,’’ says Munish Baldev, CEO of Delhi’s Ansal Plaza Mall Management, which WiFi-enabled the mall a year ago with four public-access terminals. ‘‘Internet is serious work, but also fun.’’

The mall does not charge its laptop-toting clientele, and has no plans to. Next on their WiFi list: Ludhiana, followed by Faridabad.

These malls will then be hotspots (see lingo guide alongside). There are 50,000 WiFi zones, or hotspots, worldwide, barely 280 in India. But watchful techies now forecast a WiFi sweep.

‘‘In 2002 I was struggling to convince people to go WiFi,’’ says Jayesh Thakkar, Vadodara-based director of JayRaj Exim, partner of companies in USA, Israel and Russia. ‘‘Corporates are more than willing today because licensing is gone, prices have fallen heavily and expertise is available in India.’’

Thakkar returned to India five years ago because he saw this technology work abroad. ‘‘Today I have three clients the size of Hiranandani and more than 100 installations,’’ he says calmly, while surveying a Powaii hotel being rigged with WiFi access. ‘‘Offices also demand a Wide Area Network, to wirelessly connect servers in offices miles away from each other.’’

Access points wirelessly connected to broadband in homes and offices let WiFi-enabled laptops and notebooks send and receive data wirelessly at hotspots.

‘‘This was unthinkable even a year or so back,’’ says Muthu Logan, CEO of Brovis Wireless Networks. ‘‘Costs will continue to fall with volume.’’

To work at hotspots, a WiFi-enabled laptop is essential. A Centrino laptop with Intel components that make it lighter and faster costs upwards of Rs 65,000.

So Barista Coffee Company—with 22 hotspots dotting the nation—is considering providing laptops in some outlets by March. ‘‘Negotiations are on with laptop vendors for the best possible price,’’ says Brotin Banerjee, COO, Barista. ‘‘After getting the happening crowd acquainted with WiFi, we’re sure they won’t be able to do without it one day. There is immense business potential to what WiFi can do.’’

The access point is just a white antenna the length of an arm, inside a wooden shelf at Hiranandanis’ hushed second-floor reserved for directors. It transmits a radio frequency signal to devices within a range of about 300 feet.

But at Powaii, Chennai-based Brovis Wireless Networks is deploying WiFi suites spread over 1-5 km where Hathway supplies home WiFi at Rs 499 a month for unlimited wireless access.

‘‘An underground fiber network allows us to provide WiFi to 38 Powaii buildings,’’ says Neeraj Parmar, Hathway Internet’s deputy general manager (operations). ‘‘You can log on from a car park or a rooftop.’’ He’s got 175 subscribers in the last few months.

Airtel recently moved into WiFi, with eight hip hotspots—to touch 20 by March—mostly in south Mumbai, including the soothing Cha Bar, Cafe Coffee Day outlets, Bombay Blues outlets, as well as the upscale Olive and Indigo.

‘‘We are not looking at profits since the service is free for our subscribers till March ’05,’’ says Jayant Khosla, CEO, Bharti Cellular, Mumbai.

Rajiv Kohli, regional CEO of Airtel’s broadband and telephone services has spearheaded the Bharti group’s WiFi ventures for over a year, starting with their corporate offices and a pre-paid WiFi card for business users.

‘‘Bharti is looking at growth from the residential segment too, as more people experience benefits of anywhere, anytime Internet connectivity,’’ says Kohli.

Their clients include Ansal Plaza and Pragati Maidan in Delhi and Metropolitan Mall and Centrestage Mall in Gurgaon. Elsewhere, too, entire offices are going WiFi. ‘‘All our 40 employees work on their laptop anywhere in the office premises, something not possible with a wired system,’’ says WiFi believer Capt Raghu Raman, CEO, Mahindra Special Services Group, Mumbai.

Brovis’ wireless cell consists of a base station from where a hi-speed fiber line for Net connectivity is connected to building basements. The base station beams wireless signals to subscriber units in the 1-5 km radius area. Through the subscriber units, residents within the cell can connect wirelessly to the Net.

With 100 per cent WiFi coverage since 2002, users at the Taj hotels, resorts and palaces move from room to the poolside to the banquet halls without getting disconnected—albeit at a steep price of Rs 125 to 600 plus taxes.

‘‘We issue a simple login and password to log on. In the older laptops, a WiFi card has to be installed,’’ says Prakash Shukla, senior vice-president and Chief Information Officer at Taj, Mumbai. Still confused? Then the hotel suggests you seek assistance from their cyber butlers.

From its US headquarters, Atheros Communications started tapping India’s WiFi market last year and wants to foray into the rural segment. ‘‘We believe wireless is the key medium to enable India’s tremendous growth potential for broadband,’’ says Praveen Singh, country manager India, Sales & Business Development at Atheros Communications.

With just five antennas for 150 hotspots, perhaps the largest WiFi campus covers the University of Pune’s 411 acres.

Lower down the educational ladder, Pathways World School in Haryana has been WiFi-friendly since launching in 2003. ‘‘If kids are to learn by themselves, they need tools, like the computer and the Internet. By allowing them WiFi connectivity in the dining hall, the amphitheatre, the soccer field, we make sure no ideas are lost,’’ says Rajesh Jain, director of the school.

Access speed: 512 kbps either way.

Plaything of the rich
NOT everybody has nice things to say about WiFi, perhaps because access is biased in favour of Bangalore—over 90 per cent of the hotspots in India are here.

Among these, Sify, since August 2003, has created 82 of its 88 indoor and outdoor Wi-Zones here. The other six are in Chennai.

‘‘We chose Bangalore for the pilot project as it is home to scores of IT-savvy professionals who need to stay connected,’’ says George Zacharias, president and COO Sify. ‘‘Depending on the success of the Bangalore project we’ll roll out the hotspots across metros and mini-metros.’’

Globally, the market is growing at 200 to 300 per cent and WiFi licensing regimes are getting gentler. But Zacharias admits that WiFi back home is still ‘‘nascent.’’

Late last year, Motorola Inc. launched a WiFi-enabled mobile phone. ‘‘It combines the best features of an enterprise desk phone with the best features of a cell phone,’’ says Parmindra Kwatra, country head, director and general manger of Motorola’s global telecom solution business.

But Motorola—like many other big and small firms that have developed ‘killer apps’ for WiFi around the world—isn’t giving away much about an India launch for the new and trendy CN620.

‘‘We will consider an India launch after studying the market potential here,’’ says Kwatra.

The phone isn’t in India yet because WiFi is a plaything for the rich here—not the trend-setting movement it is abroad. Less than one per cent Indians who own a computer also own a laptop.

‘‘Usage is low due to low penetration of Centrino-enabled laptops,’’ says Zacharias. ‘‘Once low-cost Centrino laptops are available there will be massive rollouts by operators. Till then, rollout will be limited to sporadic installations.’’

A WiFi jinx has grounded its access at Pune’s airport. Initially, the plan envisaged Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited running the system free on an experimental basis, but it had to be abandoned, reportedly because of the Rs-15,000 monthly rent to be paid for use of airport premises. BSNL’s corporate office has now called for nationwide tenders.

Watch the delicensing regime
WiFi and its distant cousin WiMax—for long distances—are now considered secure, high speed and relatively standardised wireless technolgies by global corporations, but the Indian government is still unsure how to tackle them.

In 2002, the Wireless Planning and Coordination Cell (WPC) of the Ministry of Telecommunications and IT de-licensed the indoor and campus use of WiFi. So corporates quickly shifted their networks to WiFi and that’s how hotspots were born at Barista and other public zones.

In December 2004, it decided “in principle’’ to allow low-power WiFi use outdoors, on a “non-protection, non-interference, non-exclusive basis” in some bands. For outdoor use, it has decided to free another frequency, once the Department of Space vacates it. Thus, outdoor WiFi remains restricted, except in commercial or educational complexes.

WiFi’s oldest enemy is fears of interferes with mobile signals, cable or defence equipment. ‘‘This could happen, but there are many efficient ways around interference apart from banning it. Besides, the threats don’t outweigh WiFi’s potential benefits,’’ says software developer Raj Mathur.

Signal interference is a problem but in rural India, where cable TV is high art and people still make do with Krishi Darshan—wouldn’t WiFi be a blessing?

with Arundhati Bakshi-Dighe in Mumbai and Jasodhara Banerjee in Pune