Broadband service provider Tikona Digital Networks has launched a Wi-Fi network at the Maharana Pratap Inter-State bus terminus (ISBT) in partnership with the Delhi Transport Corporation.
While the partnership period or financial details of the partnership were not disclosed, Tikona informed that it will be offering secured Wi-Fi connectivity to all commuters at the terminus and commuters will able to browse the Internet free of cost for the first 30 minutes.
Its not clear as to how much Tikona plans to charge for the service after the initial 30 minutes period. There is also currently no information on how commuters can access this service at ISBT. We’ll update this post after checking out Tikona’s Wi-Fi service at ISBT in a few days.
While we feel this is a welcome move, when is it that we’ll get onboard WiFi service in buses? Remember that Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) had conducted a similar pilot in October 2010, through which it was offering onboard Wi-Fi service and the bus seats were fitted with 7-inch tablets which offered daily horoscope, live stock exchange news and weather information to commuters through different apps. Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation also seems to offer onboard Wi-Fi connectivity on one of its premium buses called Airavat Bliss.
Similar Public WiFi Initiatives
Earlier this month, the Indian Railways had launched a pilot project to provide Wi-Fi facility on Howrah Rajdhani Express. The organization was planning to offer a 4Mbps download and 512 kbps upload connection through this service. It had also informed that the service will be extended to other Rajdhani, Shatabdi and Duronto express trains based on customer feedback received during the pilot.
Prior to this, Indian Railways had also conducted pilots to provide Wi-Fi on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad Shatabdi Express and Chennai- Bangalore-Chennai Shatabdi Express in 2009.
TELiBrahma had also partnered with RailTel Corporation Of India to launch BluFi in the Bangalore railway station. BluFi is a distributed form of WiFi which allows TeliBrahma to make bluetooth based services available across the station. Through this service, the company was offering Railway Information,videos, downloadable games and wallpapers among others, via Bluetooth.
An ET report had also suggested that Bangalore Metro will feature an onboard Wi-Fi connectivity, however we wonder if this project will continue to stay on the paper since the service hasn’t been rolled out yet.
Besides this, several Airports in India including Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai airports also offer free Wi-Fi service for a limited time.
