The concept of public WiFi has not picked up largely owing to the telecom service providers dragging their feet. Former Chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) squarely laid the blame for the failure of public WiFi at the telcos’ door. “In March 2017, immediately telcos came and said we will create 10-million Wifi (hotspots) by September of 2017, in six months...as of now we have just about 6 lakh public WiFi. This is 2025...basically the telcos have always been opposed to this concept,” said RS Sharma, former chairman of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), on Tuesday.

Speaking at an event organised by Broadband India Forum (BIF), Sharma said the government has also spent a lot on BharatNet, a flagship project of the Centre aimed at providing broadband connectivity to all of India’s gram panchayats (GPs), but that also has not yielded any returns.

“For BharatNet we have spent ₹42,000 crore till now, it was started in 2011 as NOFN (National Optical Fibre Network), rechristened as BharatNet in 2014...but the return on the investment is zero,” he noted.

PM-WANI

The Centre also launched Prime Minister’s Wi-Fi Access Network Interface (PM-WANI) Scheme in 2020, managed by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), to create more accessible and affordable public Wi-Fi ecosystem, but that is also taking a snail’s pace to expand in the country.

There are multiple reasons for the telcos not warming up to the idea beginning with TRAI’s pricing cap. TRAI had recently prescribed a cap on tariffs charged to Public Data Offices (PDOs) under the scheme, in order to keep public Wi-Fi affordable, while also providing reasonable compensation for the broadband connection to service providers, which some believe are still high costs.

“Every service provider providing retail Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) broadband services shall offer all of its retail FTTH broadband plans up to 200 mbps to the PDOs under the PM-WANI scheme, at tariff not exceeding twice the tariff applicable to the retail subscribers for the corresponding FTTH broadband plan of the bandwidth (capacity) offered,” TRAI said in its order.

For instance, PM-WANI tariff for 100-mbps plans was ₹1,532.82, while that of the retail broadband FTTH plan (by private companies) costs only ₹706.82. Similarly, for 50-mbps plans, PM-WANI plan costs ₹1,178.82, and the retail broadband plan is ₹588.82.

Telcos, on their part, contend that public WiFi becomes redundant for many users because of availability of cheap mobile data. Furthermore, users are wary of logging into networks with unclear ownership or privacy policies. It is also true that there is no clear path to monetisation. And with low margins and high cost of deployment, there is little incentive for private players.

“There are high bandwidth charges to PDOs and tremendous resistance/ pushback by powerful and deep-pocketed segments of telecom and there is low awareness of availability and benefits of modern public WiFi and PM- WANI,” TV Ramachandran, President, BIF said.

Published on June 24, 2025